US flag raised in Cuba after 54 yrs

Following Cuba’s reopening of its Washington embassy in July, the U.S. raised the flag at its Havana embassy in a ceremony to mark its opening.

There are still plenty of diplomatic hurdles before relations are fully renewed, including the Cuban government’s human rights record and the status of a U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay.

Leahy was part of a special Congressional delegation that flew to Cuba for the official ceremonies re-establishing a U.S Embassy.

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. However, Clinton said she came to the realization that “our previous policy of isolating Cuba was strengthening Castro’s grip” and was “unintentionally helping” the regime keep a closed society.

“There’s a sense of an opening possibility only – and we’re exploring whether or not we can find a series of steps that we agree on”, Kerry said of worldwide conversations that include the Russians and Saudis alongside the U.S. “Clearly everybody is seized on this issue right now, because of the threat of ISIS, Dayesh, that is growing, and the disorder and catastrophe that Syria has become”.

“That incident was an eye-opener for us all”, said Morris, who left the service as a corporal a few years later. “It’s a vestige of the cold war and finally both countries acknowledged that we’re in a new era, a new generation and let’s try something else”, Leahy said.

Republican presidential contender Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American senator from Florida, has been one of the more vocal opponents of the entente. Cuba remains the target of a decades-old U.S. trade embargo that only Congress can remove.

“As an American I want to be able to visit any country on the planet”, said congresswoman Karen Bass.

The events underscored the potential as well as the limits of rekindled U.S.-Cuba relations. The same three Marines who lowered the flag all those years ago were back on hand today to raise it once again. It involved the US flag being presented to the same US marines who had brought it down in 1961.

“One of the reasons that the US has changed its approach to Cuba is the realization that government officials are going to shape what happens here next, while the dissidents will play only a marginal role, ” he said. Washington severed diplomatic ties with Havana as relations soured soon after the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Mr. Kerry was scheduled to meet with them, along with an array of Cubans from entrepreneurs to artists, later in his 10-hour visit.

Cuban anti-Castro dissidents did not attend the official flag-raising ceremony at the US embassy, but were instead invited to an alternative event at the residence of the US chief of mission.

“It was a touching moment”, East said. “To see Old Glory flying for the last time in Cuba, you know, it didn’t seem right”. The state department uploaded an interview with the three men to YouTube in advance of their return to the embassy they once guarded. He also will hold a joint press conference with Rodriguez.