U.S., Cuba Reach Agreement to Establish Full Diplomatic Relations

WASHINGTON—The U.S. and Cuba have reached an agreement to restore diplomatic relations and reopen embassies in each other’s capitals, a senior administration official said Tuesday, the biggest step yet toward ending a half century of enmity between the two countries.

President Barack Obama plans to tell the nation on Wednesday that the U.S. will reopen its embassy in Havana, the official said, culminating a central aspiration of his presidency and representing the end of one of the last vestiges of the Cold War more than a quarter century after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Secretary of State John Kerry will color in details of the U.S. effort, speaking from Vienna on Wednesday about the move to convert the diplomatic post in Havana, known as the U.S. Interests Section, into a full embassy, officials said. He is expected to travel to Cuba in July to oversee the embassy’s reopening.

U.S. and Cuban leaders stunned the world in December by announcing they would move to normalize relations, setting off a six-month scramble to overcome differences. They held four rounds of talks to re-establish diplomatic ties, with the last meeting in Washington in May. Cuba late that month was formally removed from Washington’s list of sponsors of state terrorism, a critical step toward restoring diplomatic ties.

The expected announcement Wednesday would be the most concrete development to come out of the U.S. policy shift on Cuba. While Mr. Obama has taken several unilateral steps to advance ties, including removing Cuba from the terrorism list, the latest move is the product of bilateral conversation.

“It’s a big milestone,” said Ted Piccone, a Cuba expert at the Brookings Institution. “This is the first thing we’ve seen since the Dec. 17 agreement that says, ‘We’re jointly agreeing to this step.’”

Officials at the Cuban Interests Section in Washington didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Obama administration officials see the re-establishment of diplomatic ties as the first step in a longer normalization process. Congress would need to act to fully remove an embargo on trade and travel that has been in place since the early 1960s, though Mr. Obama took steps to loosen restrictions in December.

The State Department must formally notify Congress of its intent to reopen the embassy in Havana. Congress then has 15 days to review the notification before the U.S. can go ahead and formally do so.

U.S. officials have said that the formal announcement of the reopening of the embassy and the notice to Congress would come together.

The announcement is a major victory for Mr. Obama, who has supported renewed relations with Cuba since his 2008 presidential campaign and made the issue a core component of his second-term foreign policy agenda.

The U.S.-Cuba breakthrough comes on the heels of a hard-fought congressional vote last week to give Mr. Obama the authority to negotiate a new trade pact with 11 Asia-Pacific nations.

It also comes days before the expected finalization of another plank of Mr. Obama’s second-term agenda—a deal with Iran to curtail its nuclear program in exchange for lifting economic sanctions. Mr. Obama also gained on Tuesday a commitment from Brazil to buy into another administration priority: a global climate change agreement he hopes to reach by the end of the year.

All four policy initiatives, while controversial among Democrats and Republicans, were part of a far-reaching agenda Mr. Obama set in late 2012 after winning re-election. Mr. Obama had long supported the efforts but largely held back from pursuing them in his first term because of political calculations and economic restraints.

Mr. Obama, who met in April with Cuban President Raúl Castro at the Summit of the Americas, is expected to become the first sitting president to visit Cuba in nearly 60 years. Aides have said he wants to travel there and is likely to do so before leaving office in January 2017.

On Tuesday, during a news conference with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Mr. Obama said he hopes the new U.S. policy creates “more opportunities and prosperity for the Cuban people.”

But news of the expected announcement drew jeers from U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R.-Fla.), a critic of Mr. Castro. “There was little doubt that the Obama administration would pursue its goal of opening an embassy in Cuba no matter the sad reality on the ground,” she said. “Opening the American Embassy in Cuba will do nothing to help the Cuban people and is just another trivial attempt for President Obama to go legacy shopping.”

The U.S. relationship with Cuba is destined for the 2016 presidential campaign. Sen.Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), a Cuban-American and a 2016 presidential candidate, is leading efforts to ensure the U.S. economic embargo holds. He also has said he’ll oppose the nomination of any ambassador to Cuba unless he sees progress on human rights, the return of fugitives held in Cuba, the resolution of property claims and removal of restrictions of U.S. diplomats in Cuba.

The question of U.S.-Cuba ties also will heat up in Congress, with several Cuba-related bills coming to life, including a measure by Sen. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) to lift the embargo against travel to the island. The measure has 45 co-sponsors.

“This is the first step that must happen in order to lift the embargo,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.), a co-sponsor of the travel bill and author of a bill to lift the trade embargo, said of the diplomatic step in an interview.

The U.S. Embassy building, constructed in 1953 and occupying a prominent place by the Malecón, the famous seaside drive, has been a focus for tensions between the two countries, and a rallying point for the Cuban regime, which habitually called it a “nest of spies.” The U.S. closed its embassy when the two countries broke relations in 1961. The building opened as the U.S. Interests Section in 1977 when then President Jimmy Cartertried to re-establish normal diplomatic relations with Cuba.

Hundreds of thousands of Cubans, many waving small paper flags, would march past the worn building shouting revolutionary slogans on May Days. Most had little choice but to participate in the parade since omnipresent neighborhood watch committees kept notes on who marched and who didn’t.

Hoping to encourage democracy on the island, and to rile the Castro government, the Bush administration erected an electronic ticker across the windows of a high floor of the interests section building in January. 2006.

The ticker ran pro-democracy and pro-freedom sayings from the likes of Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln and others.

Then Cuban President Fidel Castro was outraged. Soon after the ticker began operations the government sponsored a huge protest rally in front of the interests sections. Billboards festooned with anti-American slogans and a series of black flags hoisted on high poles were soon erected to block the ticker.



President Obama ordered the ticker to be removed in July 2009, just eight months after taking office.