#AceNewsServices – WASHINGTON:Dec.19 – President Obama announced Wednesday that the U.S. is beginning talks with Havana to normalize full diplomatic relations with Cuba following the release of a U.S. prisoner jailed for five years by the country.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) in a press released hailed the decision to seek a normalization of relations with Cuba, while The Associated Press reported the U.S. would use the talks to open an embassy in the island nation.
Obama also took several executive actions, including expanding travel and economic ties to the island. According to a White House document, the U.S. government would raise remittance levels and authorize certain travel to Cuba, as well as start of review of Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism. Obama also has formally directed the State Department to launch talks with Cuba to re-establish diplomatic relations, which were cut in 1961. The embassy in Havana would be opened “in the coming months,” according to the White House.
Officials said the Cuban government was releasing 53 political prisoners. The announcement comes after Gross was freed, as part of an agreement that included the release of three Cubans jailed in the U.S. Gross landed in the U.S. shortly before noon on Wednesday.
DC Clothes Line’s Dean Garrison wrote: I remember my trip to Key West some 10 years ago. I stood at the southern most point in the continental U.S. and looked at a sign that read something like “90 Miles from Cuba.” I must admit, it gave me a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I still look at Cuba with a judgemental eye I suppose. Our history with Communist Cuba has been a mixed bag of emotions. Most of them are not good.

‘ Executive Committee of the National Security Council meeting. Clockwise from President Kennedy: President Kennedy; Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara; Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Maxwell Taylor; Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze; Deputy USIA Director Donald Wilson; Special Counsel Theodore Sorensen; Special Assistant McGeorge Bundy; Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon; Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy; Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson (hidden); Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson; Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Director William C. Foster; CIA Director John McCone (hidden); Under Secretary of State George Ball; Secretary of State Dean Rusk. White House, Cabinet Room.
Photograph by Cecil Stoughton, White House, in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum for the image ‘