US assistant secretary of state Roberta Jacobson, and Josefina Vidal, chief of the Cuban foreign ministry's US division, are leading the respective delegations in talks held in Washington throughout Friday morning and afternoon. They follow the first round of discussion held on January 22 in Havana.
US President Barack Obama announced a new direction for US-Cuba relations in December. Some travel and trade restrictions between the two countries were lifted last month.
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However, the US economic and financial embargo against Cuba largely remains in place since inception in October 1960, beginning shortly after Fidel Castro led a popular socialist revolution, challenging US hegemony in the Western Hemisphere.
Cuba is currently calling for removal from the US list of state sponsors of terror before any official normalization of diplomatic relations. The designation, Cuba has argued, bars the nation from doing business with certain banks which face punitive fines or forfeitures for working with nations on the terror-sponsor list.
Cuba’s President Raul Castro reaffirmed last month his nation’s willingness to normalize relations with the US, but stressed that the embargo must first be lifted.
"The main problem has not been resolved: the economic, commercial and financial blockade, which causes huge human and economic damage and is a violation of international rights," Castro said at a Latin American summit in Costa Rica.
The Cuban president also noted that the US must return Guantanamo – which has been under US control for over a century – to Cuba before full rapprochement. The White House scoffed at the request.
“I think what [Castro’s] comments highlight is there are pretty clear differences between establishing diplomatic relations and carrying out the longer process of normalizing relations,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.
“There are a variety of concerns we have with the way the Castro regime treats political dissidents, the way they treat individuals who are trying to freely express their views, even the way they treat some reporters.”
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The Obama administration is reviewing Cuba’s place on the terror-sponsor list – a designation established in 1982 for Cuba’s aid to Marxist insurgencies – though to be removed from it, the US Congress would have to approve the move, a senior State Department official said, Reuters reported.
The officials “suggested,” according to Reuters, that the US wants to reestablish economic ties and embassy locations without necessarily tying those actions to Cuba’s place on the terrorism list.
Embassy functions are particularly important, US officials say, including the allowance of US diplomats to move unmitigated around Cuba and meet with anyone, including political opponents of the Castros.
"Both of us have to come to the table in the spirit of getting to an agreement on these things, and not putting so many obstacles in the way that are not linked directly to how we function as diplomats in each other's countries," the State Department official said.
The US has said it would like to have an agreement on embassy re-openings by the April 10 meeting among South and North American heads of state in Panama.
In mid-December, both Raul Castro and Obama announced during concurrent news conferences that the two nations would try to start anew after conflicting ideologies led to a split, then sanctions, more than a half-century earlier.
“This is fundamentally about freedom and openness, and also expresses my belief in the power of people-to-people engagement,” Obama said of the policy change, adding that he hopes such “contact will ultimately do more to empower the Cuban people.”
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