HAVANA — A senior Cuban official said Tuesday that restoring diplomatic ties with the United States won’t immediately lead to a full relationship between the Cold War foes after a half-century of enmity.
The Havana talks start Wednesday morning, after President Barack Obama makes his case in the State of the Union Address for seizing the opening with Cuba by ending a U.S. trade embargo.
“Cuba isn’t normalizing relations with the United States,” the high-ranking Cuban diplomat said. “Cuba is re-establishing diplomatic relations with the U.S. The process of normalization is much longer and deeper.”
The U.S. has taken “steps in the right direction, but there’s still far to go,” the official noted. He expressed optimism about the long-term prospects for U.S.-Cuban relations as long as Washington does not try to change Cuba’s single-party government and centrally planned economy — tenets of Cuba’s system the U.S. has long opposed.
