After 50 years, US opens door to Cuba
American freed as Obama restores relations
THE US is set to restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba for the first time in more than 50 years, President Barack Obama announced yesterday.
The President said the US would open an embassy in Havana and consider lifting the trade embargo brought in after the Communist government took power in 1959.
In a speech Mr Obama said he wanted to end a ‘rigid policy rooted in events that took place before most of us were born’, adding: ‘Isolation has not worked. It’s time for a new approach.’
However, the decision was met with anger by some American politicians, who said the move ‘vindicated’ the Communist regime set up by Fidel Castro.
Cubans were told about the deal in a rare TV address from president Raul Castro, his brother, which was broadcast at the same time Mr Obama was speaking.
As church bells rang out across Havana, Castro made the unprecedented comment that ‘this decision deserves respect and recognition from our country’.
The agreement took 18 months of secret negotiations in Canada and the Vatican and was encouraged by a personal appeal from Pope Francis, US officials said. It was sealed on Tuesday with a 45-minute phone call between Mr Obama and Castro, the first such contact between the two countries in five decades.
The deal includes the release of 65-yearold American aid worker Alan Gross, who has spent five years in Cuban custody on espionage charges. In exchange, the US has freed the last three of the ‘Cuban Five’ who were jailed for spying in 2001. Cuba will also release 53 political prisoners, including an unnamed US intelligence agent who had been jailed for 20 years.
US officials said that, under the changes, Havana will also be able to open an embassy in America and Secretary of State John Kerry has been instructed to review Cuba’s place on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list.
US tourists will be able to use bank cards while visiting Cuba and there will be an increase in remittances Cubans can send home to their families. It will also be easier to get licences to trade in Cuba.
In his speech President Obama said: ‘I do not believe we can keep doing the same thing for over five decades and expect a different result.’
Mr Gross arrived at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington at lunchtime yesterday and had reportedly been overcome with emotion when told he was in US airspace.
TV news stations reported that he called his two daughters from the plane and said: ‘I’m free.’
Mr Gross was serving a 15-year sentence for taking banned telecommunications devices into Cuba in 2011 to set up an internet service for Cuban Jews. However, New Yor k Democrat Senator Robert Menendez, who is Cuban American, was critical of the deal, saying: ‘ Obama’s actions have vindicated the brutal behaviour of the Cuban government.
‘Let’s be clear, this was not a “humanitarian” act by the Castro regime. It was a swap of convicted spies for an innocent American.’
And Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio said the move was ‘absurd’ and would only ‘tighten this regime’s grip’.