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PANAMA CITY--The U.S. and Cuban foreign ministers were to meet in Panama on Thursday, the U.S. State Department said, in what would be the highest-level meeting between the two sides since the earliest days of the Cuban revolution more than half a century ago.
The discussions between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez would be the first time the two nations' chief diplomats have met since a historic opening by President Barack Obama and his Cuban counterpart, Raul Castro, that was announced on Dec. 17 last year.
"Secretary Kerry will meet with Cuban Foreign Minister Rodriguez tonight," the State Department said in a statement issued from Panama City, where regional leaders were gathering for the Summit of the Americas held every three years.
The statement said nothing about whether Obama may remove Cuba from the U.S. state sponsors of terrorism list, a move that is widely expected following the rapprochement between the two countries. The U.S. State Department has recommended that Obama remove Cuba from the list, a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee aide said on Thursday.
Obama, speaking while on a short visit to Jamaica, said only that the State Department had completed its review but that he was waiting for a recommendation from his advisers and would not announce a decision on Thursday. "State has recommended they be removed from the list," said the Senate aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Removing Cuba from the list would clear a major obstacle in the effort to restore diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana, paving the way for the reopening of embassies that have been shut for 54 years, and signal momentum in ending America's isolation from the Communist island nation.
"That review has been completed at the State Department. It is now forwarded to the White House. Our inter-agency team will go through the entire thing and then present it to me with a recommendation. That hasn't happened yet," Obama said.
Obama's decision to move toward restoring diplomatic ties marks a sea change in relations since the Cuban revolution, when U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista fled the island on Jan. 1, 1959, as Fidel Castro and his revolutionaries seized control.
John Foster Dulles and Gonzalo Guell were the last U.S. and Cuban foreign ministers to hold a formal meeting, which took place in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 22, 1958, said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The highest-level meeting after the revolution took place in April 1959, between then-Vice President Richard Nixon and Fidel Castro, who had become his country's prime minister in early 1959. Relations between the United States and Cuba rapidly deteriorated soon after.
After Jamaica, Obama traveled to Panama for a summit with Latin American leaders where he will meet Cuban President Raul Castro for the first since the December announcement. Obama said he expected the two countries would be in a position to move forward on opening embassies, though he did not lay out a time frame.
"I never foresaw that immediately overnight everything would transform itself, that suddenly Cuba became a partner diplomatically with us the way Jamaica is, for example," he said. "We're confident that this process of engagement will ultimately lead to not just improved relations between the United States and Cuba, but will also end up being beneficial for the Cuban people and give them the kinds of opportunities that they might not have in the past."
