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1. WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama will travel to Cuba within
weeks, a senior administration official said on Wednesday, making a historic
visit as part of an effort to end more than a half-century of estrangement and
forge normalized relations with a Cold War adversary.
The administration will announce the trip — the first by a sitting president in 88
years, when Calvin Coolidge visited — on Thursday as top officials from the
commerce, treasury and state departments are meeting privately with their
Cuban counterparts in Washington for talks aimed at expanding business ties
between the two nations.
Opening the discussions on Wednesday, Penny Pritzker, the commerce
secretary, called on the government of Cuba to open its economy to American
business and investment, saying the Cubans must do more to help facilitate
commerce after the thaw between the two nations.
Pritzker said her department had acted aggressively since Obama's
December 2014 announcement to pave the way for American companies to
do business in Cuba, granting 490 authorizations amounting to $4.3 billion last
year alone — a roughly 30 per cent increase over the previous year.
"But we need help from the Cuban side," Pritzker said. "The US companies
that are attempting to do business in your country continue to face
challenges."
She added: "Without specific changes on your side that allow the private
sector to engage, our changes will not unlock the opportunities for the Cuban
people that both of us want to see."
The talks, which began in a wood-paneled library at the commerce
department within view of the White House, represent the latest effort by the
Obama administration to push forward with the policy shift the president set in
motion just over a year ago. But the process is vastly complicated by the
American statutory trade and commercial embargo that has been in place for
decades and that only Congress can lift.
2. While the commerce and treasury departments have moved several times to
loosen restrictions on travel and trade, Rodrigo Malmierca, the foreign trade
and investment minister of Cuba, said the onus was on the United States to
remove the embargo, and on Obama to essentially defang the laws that
compose it in the meantime.
"These measures have been positive and are in the right direction, but still
they are not sufficient in terms of the lifting of the main obstacle that we still
confront that is the blockade," Malmierca, who was seated opposite Pritzker
as the talks began, said in Spanish through a translator. "We are aware of the
fact that the blockade can only be fully lifted with the actions in Congress," he
added, but, "we know that the executive has prerogatives which can be used
in terms of the dismantling, trying to void the blockade."
The regulatory discussions began on Wednesday, a day after the signing in
Havana of an arrangement allowing scheduled direct flights between the
United States and Cuba for the first time in decades.
American carriers can begin applying to the transportation department to offer
the service — up to 20 scheduled flights a day to Havana and 10 to each of
nine other international airports in Cuba. The pact aims to substantially
increase travel between the two countries, which are currently served by only
about a dozen charter flights a day.
But even as Obama makes progress in his drive to forge closer commercial
ties with Cuba, the process is hamstrung by sanctions that have left American
businesses wondering what they are permitted to do. Malmierca said on
Tuesday that he had heard from many US companies that want to establish
businesses in Cuba but are ensnared in regulatory limbo, awaiting special
licenses from the US government.
"The problem that we face today is that many companies want to do business,
but we need to create the conditions for them to access the Cuban market,"
Malmierca said at an event hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce.
He repeatedly said that Cuba welcomed American investment and would not
