President Barack Obama announced Wednesday, the next steps his administration will take to “end an outdated approach ” and begin to normalize relations with Cuba, including restoring full diplomatic relations.
Over the past 18 months, secret talks have been held which culminated with Mr. Obama and President Raul Castro agreeing in a telephone conversation to put aside decades of hostility and to work on developing a new relationship between the the two countries.
“We will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests and instead we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries,” Mr. Obama said in a nationally televised statement from the White House. The deal will “begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas” and move beyond a “rigid policy that is rooted in events that took place before most of us were born.”
In addition to re-establishing diplomatic relations, Mr. Obama’s new approach entails improving travel and remittance policies, furthering people-to-people contact, authorize expanded sales and exports from the U.S. to Cuba, new efforts to increase Cubans’ access to communications, and provide strong support for improved human rights conditions and democratic reforms, among others.
Mr. Obama’s remarks followed the release today of American Alan Gross who had been held in a Cuban prison for five years. In exchange for Gross, the U.S. agreed to free three Cubans who had been jailed for spying.
Watch the YouTube video above in which Mr. Obama outlines the steps the U.S. would take to “end an outdated approach” and begin to normalize relations with Cuba.
