CUBA-USA/EMBASSY CEREMONY-KERRY Kerry says Cuba best served by 'genuine democracy' as U.S. flag raised

Record ID: 143963

  • Title: CUBA-USA/EMBASSY CEREMONY-KERRY Kerry says Cuba best served by 'genuine democracy' as U.S. flag raised
  • Date: 14th August 2015
  • Summary: HAVANA, CUBA (AUGUST 14, 2015) (UNRESTRICTED POOL) VARIOUS OF U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY APPROACHING THE PODIUM AS AUDIENCE CLAPS U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY SPEAKING AS AUDIENCE LISTENS U.S. MARINE VETERANS LISTENING
  • Embargoed: 29th August 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Cuba
  • Country: Cuba
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA3PA3J81ZKCS15NYYMGCMWZP89
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Cuba on Friday (August 14) to raise the U.S. flag at the recently restored American Embassy in Havana, another symbolic step in improved relations between the two Cold War-era foes.
    The ceremony, raising the flag over the building for the first time in 54 years, came nearly four weeks after the United States and Cuba formally renewed diplomatic relations and upgraded their diplomatic missions to embassies.
    "It doesn't take a GPS to realize that the road to mutual isolation and estrangement that the United States and Cuba were traveling was not the right one and that the time has come for us to move in a more promising direction," Kerry said during the ceremony.
    Kerry, the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Cuba in 70 years, was accompanied by aides, members of Congress and three U.S. Marines who last lowered the flag there in January 1961. President Dwight Eisenhower severed diplomatic ties with Havana as relations soured soon after the 1959 Cuban Revolution.
    While the Cubans celebrated with a flag-raising in Washington on July 20, the Americans waited until Kerry could travel to Havana.
    Kerry made plain in his remarks that despite the historic opening, Washington has not set aside criticism of Communist-run Cuba's human rights record but added that "Cuba's future is for Cubans to shape" and that it would be "unrealistic to expect normalizing relations to have - in the short term - a transformational impact".
    Kerry will meet Cuban dissidents opposed to the island's one-party political system at the U.S. embassy residence in Havana later on Friday.
    But dissidents were not invited to the morning flag-raising in deference to the Cuban government, generating criticism from opponents of U.S. President Barack Obama's opening to Cuba.
    Seeking to end the long hostilities, Cuban President Raul Castro and U.S. President Barack Obama announced last December they would restore diplomatic ties, reopen embassies and work to normalize relations.
    The restoration of diplomatic ties sets up the more complicated task of normalizing overall relations.
    Cuba wants the United States to end its economic embargo of the island, return the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in eastern Cuba and halt radio and television signals beamed into Cuba.
    Cuban-American poet Richard Blanco, who wrote and read the inaugural poem during Obama's second inauguration, was also at Friday's ceremony and recited his original poem, "Matters Of The Sea", to mark the historic event.
    "We've all cupped seashells up to our ears. Listen, again, to the echo," Blanco said, reading from his poem. "Today, the sea still telling us the end to all our doubts and fears is to gaze into the lucid blues of our shared horizon. To breathe, together. To heal, together," he continued.
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