USA - CUBA RELATION CHANGE

U.S. Official Meets With Cuban Authorities

Published: September 29, 2009
WASHINGTON — In another sign of improving relations between Cuba and the United States, a senior State Department official has talked with high-level Cuban officials in Havana about a variety of issues, including ways to improve cooperation on migration and the fight against drug trafficking.
State Department officials said the main purpose of a trip two weeks ago by the official, Bisa Williams, was to discuss restarting mail service between the United States and the Communist-ruled country.
But a State Department spokesman, Charles Luoma-Overstreet, said Tuesday that Ms. Williams was also able to meet with a senior member of Cuba’s Foreign Ministry for broader talks and was given the opportunity to tour a Cuban agricultural facility and areas affected by hurricanes in the Western province of Pinar del Río.
The talks were first reported by The Associated Press.
Mr. Luoma-Overstreet said Ms. Williams, an acting deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, was the highest-ranking State Department official to visit Cuba since 2002; in 2004, the Bush administration ended twice-a-year migration talks with Havana.
The Obama administration restarted those talks this year, hosting a Cuban delegation in New York. President Obama has also lifted Bush administration limits on remittances and travel for Cuban-Americans with relatives on the island.
Among other small but significant gestures, United States officials turned off an electronic sign that streamed anti-Castro messages on the windows of the United States Interests Section, the diplomatic complex Washington maintains in Havana. In return, Cuban officials lowered dozens of large black flags they had raised to block the view of the sign.
“Look at the momentum; look at the pace of these steps,” said Julia E. Sweig, a Cuba expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s a departure from many, many years of practice.”
State Department officials offered few details of Ms. Williams’s talks with Cuban authorities. And some played down the significance of the talks, in a nod to the political problems that changes in Cuban relations can create both here and in Havana.
Just before Ms. Williams traveled to Cuba, President Obama signed a one-year extension of the Trading With the Enemy Act, which is the law used to impose a trade embargo against Cuba.
And administration officials have repeatedly said they would not make any moves to ease the embargo until the Cuban government adopted democratic reforms.
“While neither side is saying what was discussed,” said Sarah Stephens, executive director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, “I believe that the president has authorized these talks because he has a plan for bridging the chasm between Cuba and the United States that has existed for 50 years.
“This did not have to happen,” she added. “These talks are taking place because the president decided it’s the right thing to do.”