Kerry to reopen embassy in Cuba, but tensions remain

HAVANA-The three retired U.S. marines who lowered the flag at the American embassy here in 1961 helped raise the Stars and Stripes once again Friday at the seven-story building alongside Havana’s seaside Malecon boulevard.

“There is nothing to fear”, Kerry said.

“For our nations, today represents the beginning of a new chapter” and a key step in normalizing relations, Jeffrey DeLaurentis, the chief U.S. diplomat in Havana, said in opening remarks at the ceremony Friday.

Kerry addressed such criticism in his speech, saying that the U.S. remains “convinced the people of Cuba would be best served by genuine democracy”.

Fifty-four years ago, three young U.S. Marines were entrusted with the solemn task of lowering the American flag at the U.S. Embassy in Havana for what they thought would be the last time.

It was a long time coming – 54 years since the U.S. severed ties with Cuba and closed the embassy.

And in Cuba, dissidents have expressed concern that closer ties between the governments will leave them out in the cold.

American poet Richard Blanco, born to a Cuban exile family recited a poem “Cosas del Mar” or “Matters of the Sea” at the ceremony. He becomes the first person in his position to visit the communist island since World War II. Hundreds of Cubans gathered outside the embassy for the historic ceremony, which followed a similar flag-raising ceremony outside the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C., last month.

In addition to demanding the administration reconsider its ranking, Rubio also wants Kerry to hand over all “prior drafts” of the Cuba section in the trafficking report, the names of all State Department and White House officials who signed off on the section and a copy of the Cuban government plan to combat trafficking.

The US for its part says Cuba owed $US7 billion to American citizens and companies whose property was seized after Fidel Castro came to power.

In December, President Obama announced that the “U.S. was ending an “outdated approach” of isolating Cuba”.

Kerry is expected to remain in the Caribbean island for only a few hours, meeting with Rodriguez, but not with President Raul Castro or his ailing older brother, revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.

Kerry was then scheduled to meet with Cuba’s foreign minister, the country’s Roman Catholic archbishop and, separately, a hand-picked group of dissidents. “Activists are invited to a reception later, at the U.S. ambassador’s residence”. But the Republican-controlled Congress has resisted his call to end America’s wider economic embargo.