Official: US-Cuba Talks on Immigration to Resume (two articles)

AP: Official: US-Cuba talks on immigration to resume
Posted by: "Walter Lippmann" walterlx@earthlink.net walterlx
Sun May 31, 2009 7:12 am (PDT)


Official: US-Cuba talks on immigration to resume
By MATTHEW LEE – 24 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — A top State Department official says Cuba has agreed to resume negotiations with the U.S. over immigration and mail service between the two countries.

The official says Cuba notified the U.S. on Saturday that it had accepted a recent U.S. overture to restart the talks. The official also says Cuba expressed a willingness to cooperate with the U.S. on fighting terrorism and drug trafficking, and on hurricane disaster preparedness.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the time and place for the resumed talks has not been determined.

The official spoke to reporters Sunday just before Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton left on a trip to El Salvador and Honduras.

She plans to attend a meeting Tuesday in Honduras where Cuba's possible readmission to the Organization of American States is expected to be discussed.

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WALTER LIPPMANN
Los Angeles, California
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
"Cuba - Un Paraíso bajo el bloqueo"
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4.
AFP: Cuba agrees to resume US talks
Posted by: "Walter Lippmann" walterlx@earthlink.net walterlx
Sun May 31, 2009 7:13 am (PDT)


Cuba agrees to resume US talks
23 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Cuba has agreed to resume talks with the United States on migration and direct mail, another positive move between the two tense neighbors, a senior State Department official said here Sunday.

A senior Cuban diplomat in Washington gave US officials notes on Saturday which signalled "Cuba would like to resume migration talks.... engage in talks on direct mail service," the official said on the condition of anonymity.

=========================================
WALTER LIPPMANN
Los Angeles, California
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
"Cuba - Un Paraíso bajo el bloqueo"
=========================================

Bac

THE NEW YORK TIMES
June 1, 2009
Cuba Open to Additional Direct Talks with U.S.
By MARK LANDLER and BRIAN KNOWLTON

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/world/americas/01cuba.html

WASHINGTON — Cuba has notified the United States that it is willing to resume talks on migration issues and to negotiate direct postal services between the countries, a senior American official said on Sunday.

Cuba also agreed to cooperate with the United States on counterterrorism, drug interdiction and disaster relief efforts.

The decisions, conveyed Saturday in diplomatic notes, represent another step in the unlocking of relations between Cuba and the United States under the Obama administration, after a half-century of chilly ties and an economic embargo that many in the hemisphere, and in Europe, say has outlived its usefulness.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday left for El Salvador and then a meeting on Tuesday in Honduras of the Organization of American States. Members of the group want the United States to mark an even clearer break with the past by moving to readmit Cuba. The organization expelled Cuba in 1962, citing what it said was Cuba’s disruptive alliance with “the Communist bloc.”

Mrs. Clinton told a Senate committee earlier this year that the United States remained set against Cuban membership in the OAS until Havana moved to accept the group’s democratic principles. Without that, she said, “‘I cannot foresee how Cuba can be a part of the OAS.”

The group generally operates by consensus, but conceivably could muster the 23 votes needed to pass a resolution defying the U.S. stance. Cuba, for its part, has said it has no interest in returning to an organization that the official newspaper Granma referred to recently as “that decrepit old house of Washington.”

Mrs. Clinton is stopping in El Salvador for the presidential inauguration on Monday of the leftist leader Mauricio Funes. Mr. Funes plans, as one of his first official acts, to immediately restore his country’s relations with Cuba, which will leave the United States as the only country at the OAS meeting without full ties to Havana.

Earlier this month, the U.S. administration had signaled its willingness to reopen a high-level channel with Havana by proposing meetings on migration. Those efforts appear to have gained momentum after a regional summit meeting in April in Trinidad at which President Obama told Latin leaders that “the United States seeks a new beginning with Cuba.”

High-level meetings between the two countries were held regularly in the mid-1990s, following a U.S.-Cuban agreement aimed at stemming the flow of tens of thousands of Cubans fleeing the island, often in flimsy craft, to the United States.

President George W. Bush called an end to the bilateral meetings in 2004, largely suspending regular communication with Cuba. He cited its treatment of Cubans repatriated to the island, the surveillance of dissidents, the handling of exit visas, and other matters.

The State Department said recently that the United States sought resumed talks to “reaffirm both sides’ commitment to safe, legal and orderly migration, to review trends in illegal Cuban migration to the United States and to improve operational relations with Cuba on migration issues.”

Two months ago, President Obama, who repeatedly has expressed a willingness to engage even with leaders who have been hostile to the United States, lifted restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba for Cuban-Americans with relatives on the island.

The matter remains politically sensitive. Cuban-American members of Florida’s congressional delegation, all Republicans, earlier denounced the proposal to reopen talks, calling it a “unilateral concession by the Obama administration to the dictatorship.”