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John Kerry

HAVANA. — John Kerry formally reopened the US embassy in Cuba with a flag-raising ceremony yesterday, during the first visit to the country by a US secretary of state since 1945.

Standing in an outdoor courtyard with a calm Caribbean sea across the street behind him, Kerry pronounced “a day for pushing aside old barriers and pursuing new possibilities”.

“For more than half a century, US-Cuba relations have been suspended in the amber of cold war politics,” Kerry said. “It’s time to unfurl our flags and let the world know, we wish each other well.”

Occasionally translating himself into Spanish, Kerry warned against “unrealistic expectations” of immediate changes to follow the normalization of diplomatic relations. “Cuba’s future is for Cubans to shape,” he said.

“We urge the Cuban government to make it less difficult for their citizens to start businesses, to go online, to engage in trade,” Kerry said. “We are certain that the time is now to reach out to one another as two people who are no longer enemies or rivals, but neighbors.”

The flag-raising did not change the status of the building, which like its Cuban counterpart in Washington was converted from an interests section to an embassy in July. Cuban foreign minister Bruno Eduardo Rodríguez visited Washington last month to reopen the Cuban embassy.

Normalisation of diplomatic relations between the two countries was announced last December.

Obama administration critics have said the White House should have sought more concessions from the Castro government on human rights as part of the diplomatic thaw.

A US economic embargo on Cuba, which can only be lifted by Congress, remains in place, although the Obama administration has taken steps to loosen restrictions on economic activity on the island and has promised more of the same.

“After 54 years of seeing zero progress, one of the things we negotiated is the ability of our diplomats to be able to meet with people in Cuba and not to be restrained,” Kerry said Thursday. “And I believe the people of Cuba benefit by the virtue of that presence and that ability.”

Meanwhile, Fidel Castro marked his 89th birthday with a newspaper column repeating assertions that the US owes socialist Cuba “numerous millions of dollars” for damages caused by its decades-long embargo.

The brief essay came a day before an historic moment in US-Cuba relations: US secretary of state John Kerry is to raise the Stars and Stripes over a restored American embassy in Havana, though the economic embargo legally remains in effect.

Fidel Castro did not directly mention the restored relations, though he made several critical references to the US.

He said Washington owes Cuba indemnifications “that rise to numerous millions of dollars” for damage caused by the embargo.

He also repeated his criticism of the US decision to stop swapping dollars for gold in 1971, a stand shared with some conservative economists.

Castro has said in the past that such a move left the dollar alone as the world’s measure of value for currencies.

Castro came to power in 1959 following a revolution. Relations with the United States were broken in 1961 as Castro led Cuba rapidly into a socialist model allied with the Soviet Union. — The Guardian.