Kerry calls for democracy as U.S. flag raised

“We will continue to urge the Cuban government to fulfill its obligations under UN and Inter-American human rights covenants – obligations shared by the United States and every other country in the Americas”, Kerry said.

Saying that “the time has come for us to move in a more promising direction”, Kerry said that “in the United States, that means recognizing that U.S. policy is not the anvil on which Cuba’s future will be forged”.

The U.S embassy will be reopened in Havana on Friday, with U.S Secretary of State, John Kerry, attending.

In comments published on a U.S. State Department blog post, East recalled the moment when Washington and Havana broke off diplomatic relations at the height of Cold War tensions.

With regard to the US economic, financial and trade blockade for over 50 years on Cuba, he said, “The embargo has always been a two-way street”.

“Cuba may never be the same again, but I really believe if the Cuban people have the light of the Americans there then they will begin to get a chance to have a better life”, said Vesa.

Three retired Marines who last lowered the flag in 1961 participated in the ceremony, handing a new flag to the Marine Color Guard, which raised it on the grounds outside the embassy building on the Havana seafront.

The rapprochement after 54 years of formal diplomatic estrangement was engineered by Fidel’s brother Raul, who took over Cuba’s presidency after the elder Castro suffered a health crisis in 2006.

Kerry says Cuban diplomats in Washington and American diplomats in Havana can now engage more openly with Cuban and American citizens.

While reiterating Cuba’s desire to normalise ties with the US on the basis of respect and equality, Rodriguez expressed his conviction that “beyond the differences between our governments, which will obviously not disappear, it is possible to build civilized and productive relations”. Kerry said he was due to meet dissidents at a private event later today.

The senior official indicated that Cuban dissidents would not be part of the flag-raising ceremony at the U.S. Embassy. He is also a former governor of Florida, home to the biggest Cuban emigre population.

He highlighted Cuba’s demand for the end of the decades-old US embargo and the return of the US Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, in south-eastern Cuba. That’s a subject that has remained off-limits in Cuba even as the single-party government has implemented a series of economic reforms and re-established diplomatic ties with the U.S.

Although US Barack Obama eased some of the travel and business restrictions, the full embargo can be lifted only by Congress.

The U.S. tried several times to hold discussions with Cuban officials about the details of Obama’s loosening of U.S. regulations but those meetings never happened amid the pressure to strike a deal allowing the reopening of embassies in Havana and Washington on July 20.