Canada secures berth for 2016 Olympics

Kerry will be the highest-ranking US official to visit Cuba since Castro’s 1959 revolution and the first secretary of state to visit the island in more than 70 years.

“The territory where torture occurs and people are held in legal limbo isn’t under Cuban jurisdiction”.

Dr Luis Rene Fernandez Tabio, Professor of Economics at Havana University’s Centre for United States and Hemispheric Studies and Research, remains pessimistic that the embargo will be lifted before the passage of the next five years. The embargo has not brought down this dictatorship, but it has played a part in the ongoing suffering of the people who live there.

There has been a long history between the two teams of late, with Canada beating the Cubans 71-68 at the Pan Ams.

“We are all very aware of how these tournaments work”.

“Of course we Cubans aspire to more democracy, more liberty and more of everything, because the truth is that life here is really hard”, said Roger Granado, a 44-year-old masseur from the working-class Cerro neighbourhood.

Obama has called for an end to the embargo, but faces an uphill battle as he needs approval from Congress, where both houses are now controlled by his Republican opponents – many of them deeply hostile to communist Cuba.

Fidel Castro did not directly mention the restored relations, though he made several critical references to the U.S. “We hope to build an exciting era for all of us”.

The Americans will press Cuba on human rights, the return of fugitives granted asylum and the claims of Americans whose property was nationalized after Fidel Castro came to power.

On whether there were fears if things delay, a new US president would undo what President Barack Obama had done with Cuba, Kerry said: “If we do things right, I don’t see how another president would throw out the window what we have developed”.

In the past, he conceded, United States policies had not led to democracy.

A young girl looks out an embassy window at the flags of the United States and Cuba.

With its imported Italian travertine facade, the architecture said what the diplomats wouldn’t: The American way was the way of a prosperous future.

Kerry also said it was too early to judge how the rapprochement was proceeding and whether Cuba was reforming. With the game on the line Nurse scored eight points and Langlois six, while adding a steal and assisting on a pair of Nurse’s baskets as they sliced the Cuban defence at will, turning the game upside down.

The task of normalizing overall relations is more complicated. Cuba needs to balance the economic, social and political situation with the rest of the world and not be dominated by the US. Klobuchar’s bill to lift the export ban, dubbed the Freedom to Export to Cuba Act, has been gaining ground in the Senate.

“We have profound differences on national security, human rights and political models”, Rodriguez said.

Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said 50 years of the embargo have not secured U.S. interests in Cuba, but have disadvantaged American businesses by restricting commerce with a market of 11 million people just 90 miles from U.S. shores.

The time has come for our nations to build a new relationship, and it’s good that we seized the moment.