>Aug 14, 2015
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/americas/82055-150814-kerry-in-havana-for-banner-day-in-us-cuba-relations
Kerry, the first secretary of state to visit Cuba since 1945, said the shift in US policy did not mean Washington would stop pressing for change on the communist island.
"The leaders in Havana and the Cuban people should also know that the United States will always remain a champion of democratic principles and reforms," he said, in a speech delivered partly in Spanish.
"We remain convinced the people of Cuba would be best served by a genuine democracy where people are free to choose their leaders."
The thawing in the Cold War conflict has been criticized by Obama's conservative opponents.
Kerry's visit drew barbed comments from leading Republicans, including 2016 presidential contenders Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush.
Rubio, a Cuban-American senator from Florida, slammed the Obama administration for the absence of Cuban dissidents from the flag-raising ceremony.
"All the people in Cuba fighting for democracy, when they protest, they are rounded up, arrested and beaten. None of them were invited to this event," he told Fox News.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said the country was ready to discuss any issue with the United States, including human rights – "though we may not always agree," he added, speaking alongside Kerry at a joint press conference.
In eight months of negotiations since the rapprochement was announced, the two sides have made progress on a number of divisive issues, most notably the removal of Cuba from Washington's list of "state sponsors of terrorism."
But Rodriguez warned that Cuba still has tough demands on the table as the two sides continue talks.
They include the full lifting of the "blockade" or economic embargo that the US has maintained on Cuba since 1962 and the return of the "usurped" Cuban territory of the American navy base at Guantanamo Bay, he said.
Kerry also took a stroll through Old Havana, with an eye on meeting ordinary Cubans in the historic colonial district.
He will not, however, meet with either Castro or his elder brother Fidel, the icon who led Cuba from its 1959 revolution until his retirement in 2006.
Underlining the sticking points still complicating relations, Fidel Castro said in an essay published in Cuban state media Thursday his 89th birthday that the United States owes Cuba "many millions of dollars" because of the trade embargo.
Cuba says the embargo has cost it $116 billion.
The United States for its part says Cuba owes $7 billion to American citizens and companies whose property was seized after Castro came to power.
Kerry reiterated that the Obama administration "strongly favors" lifting the embargo.
But Obama faces an uphill battle as he needs approval from Congress, where both houses are currently controlled by his Republican opponents – many of them deeply hostile to Havana.