HAVANA (AP) – Washington’s top diplomat is coming to Havana on Friday to raise the Stars and Stripes over the newly opened U.S. Embassy, making a symbolically charged victory lap for the Obama administration’s new policy of engagement with Cuba.
Ordinary Cubans will cheer, U.S. business executives will network and Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with Cuba’s foreign minister, the country’s Roman Catholic archbishop and a hand-picked group of dissidents.
Then the hard part begins.
Soon after Kerry heads home Friday evening, the Cuban and U.S. diplomats who negotiated the embassy reopening will launch full-time into the next phase of detente: expanding economic ties between the two nations with measures like direct flights and mail service.
The Americans also want to resolve billions of dollars in half-century-old American claims over property confiscated after the Cuban revolution. Cuba has its own claims, as noted in a newspaper column by Fidel Castro on Thursday saying the U.S. owes the island “numerous millions of dollars” for damages caused by the embargo.