After 54 years, U.S. flag flies in Havana
Kerry urges end to ‘suspicion and fear’ as embassy reopens.
HAVANA — Secretary of State John Kerry presided over the official reopening of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba under a blazing Caribbean sun Friday, declaring an end to “too many days of sacrifice and sorrow, too many days of suspicion and fear” over more than half a century of estrangement between the two countries.
As a U.S. Army brass band played the national anthem, the three elderly Marines who last lowered the flag here in January 1961 handed a new, folded banner to the young members of the new contingent of Marine guards, who raised it and saluted.
Crowds of several hundred Cubans, some of them waving small American flags, stood behind barricades outside the iron fence surrounding the embassy. When the band played the Cuban national anthem, some in the crowd outside shouted, “Viva.”
Before an invited audience of about 300 U.S. and Cuban officials, along with foreign diplomats, Kerry praised President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro for what he called “a courageous decision to stop being prisoners of history and to
focus on the opportunities of today and tomorrow.”
“The time has come for us tomove in a more promising direction,” Kerry said, adding that “in the United States, that means recognizing that U.S. policy is not the anvil on which Cuba’s future will be forged.”
Cuba’s future, he said, “is for Cubans to shape.” But, he warned Cuba’s communist leaders, “the United States will always remain a champion of democratic principles and reforms.”
“We remain convinced that the people of Cuba would be best served by a genuine democracy, where people are free to choose their leaders, express their ideas and practice their faith, where the commitment to economic and social justice is realized more fully, where institutions are answerable to those they serve, and where civil society is independent and allowed to flourish.”
Kerry is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Cuba since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration.
“As two people who are no longer enemies or rivals, but neighbors,” he said in English and Spanish, it is “time to unfurl our flags, raise them up and let theworld know that we wish each other well.”
Kerry also met with Cuban civil society leaders, including a selection of political dissidents. While many support the embassy reopening, others have joined some U.S. lawmakers in charging that the administration gave up the principal U.S. leverage in Cuba and got little in return from the repressive government.
Kerry has rejected criticism of the decision not to invite Cuban dissidents to the reopening ceremony, describing it as a “government-to-government event.” Several senior administration officials, discussing the sensitive issue on condition of anonymity, said they were taken aback by the criticism.
“You don’t hold an official event to which the host government is invited and make it a forum for government opponents,” said one.
Kerry said that human rights would be “at the top of our agenda” in discussions with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez and that the United States is committed to pursuing “tough” issues, including human rights, with the Cuban government.
Under the new process for dialogue agreed to Friday with Rodriguez, U.S.-Cuban issues are to be divided into three baskets of increasing difficult. The “easy” issues, Kerry said, include maritime issues, climate change and an environmental dialogue. A second, he said, is “a little more complicated,” dealing with issues such as civil aviation and internet connectivity, which the Cuban government has been slow to implement.
The third, Kerry said, is the “toughies,” including human rights, law enforcement, fugitives from U.S. justice in Cuba and compensation claims on both sides.
“There is no shying away from direct conversation” on tough issues, he said.
The first round of talks on these issues, he said, would begin in Washington on Sept. 10.
Kerry, whose trip here was limited to one day, said he hopes to return to Cuba for a stay of several days sometime this winter, when he said he expected to meet with the Cuban president.