•  havana
• Monday, January 17, 2011
• Inter Press Service

The Cuban capital was the venue for a new round of immigration talks between delegations from this Caribbean island nation and the United States, although no major progress towards a broader dialogue is expected, in contrast to the hopes raised when President Barack Obama took office.

'There are no signals. Some time ago, Cuba proposed a series of issues to expand the agenda for talks, but Washington never responded,' Cuban historian Esteban Morales, who considers it necessary for the two countries to discuss other issues besides immigration, told IPS.

Arturo López-Levy, a Cuban émigré to the United States who is a lecturer at the University of Denver in the United States, said the fact that Cuban-born Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen now chairs the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee will have a 'very negative impact' on any possible moves in the U.S. Congress to improve relations with Cuba.

'Ros-Lehtinen has backed all initiatives to strengthen the (five-decade U.S.) embargo, and has participated in blocking any law designed to ease it,' López-Levy said in an email interview with IPS. But in his view, the biggest problem in bilateral relations is that Washington has not reacted intelligently to economic reforms adopted by the Cuban government or its release of political prisoners, even though Obama had specifically called for 'a sense of movement on those fronts in Cuba.'

The U.S. broke off diplomatic ties with Cuba in 1961. But in 1994 and 1995, they signed migration accords subject to a six-monthly review in meetings held alternately in the two countries. However, the meetings were interrupted in 2003 and were not resumed until Obama became president.

In separate statements, Havana and Washington expressed an interest in continuing the exchanges, after Wednesday's talks -- the fourth round since the resumption of talks in 2009 -- took place 'in a climate of respect,' according to the Cuban delegation. The U.S. delegation, led by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson, once again called for the 'immediate release' of U.S. government contractor Alan Gross, who has been in a Cuban jail since December 2009 without charges.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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