AMERICAS

Cuba Ready to Exchange Diplomats, Raúl Castro Says

By 
MEXICO CITY — The United States and Cuba appear to be edging closer to an agreement to restore full diplomatic ties, with President Raúl Castro of Cuba saying Tuesday that his country was ready to exchange ambassadors once it was formally removed this month from the American government’s list of states sponsoring terrorism.
President Obama announced in April that he would remove Cuba from the list 30 years after it was added for supporting leftist insurgencies. He has called the designation outdated, and it has been a major stumbling block to the goal of restoring relations that he and Mr. Castro jointly declared in December. The law requires a 45-day review period for removal from the list, which would take effect on May 29.
Mr. Castro, speaking to reporters at the Havana airport as President François Hollande of France ended a visit, said of the terrorism designation, “This sort of unjust accusation is about to be lifted, and we’ll be able to name ambassadors.”
Still, it was unclear how fast that would occur, and the two governments do not yet appear to have agreed on resolving all of their concerns.
The countries are seeking to elevate their current missions, known as interests sections, to embassy status, which they have not had since the United States broke relations in 1961 during the Cold War.
The State Department, in a statement after Mr. Castro spoke, was circumspect about progress.
“An exchange of ambassadors would be a logical step only once we re-establish diplomatic relations,” the statement said. “There is no set time as we are still in negotiations.”
For the United States, those negotiations include discussions about allowing its diplomats to move freely around the island. American diplomats are currently restricted to Havana unless they have permission. Likewise, Cuban diplomats cannot venture much beyond Washington or, for those at the United Nations mission, New York.
Lifting such restrictions for a future American Embassy appears to be a sticking point with Havana, which has long complained that American diplomats’ encounters with dissidents amount to meddling in Cuba’s internal affairs.
Mr. Castro said Tuesday that he had told Mr. Obama that such encounters remained his chief concern, particularly programs at the American interests section to assist independent journalists.
“What I told them, President Obama, concretely was that what I was most worried about is that they continue to do illegal things,” Mr. Castro said, according to Reuters. “For example, graduating independent journalists.”
Cuba, aside from getting off the terrorism list, has been pushing to get a bank to handle its accounts at its interest section in Washington and a future embassy. It has been without a bank account since last year, when M & T Bank of Buffalo closed its accounts out of fear of Treasury Department sanctions, Cuban and State Department officials have said.
Last month, a Treasury Department official said it had taken steps to make it easier for Cuba to find a bank and expected an agreement to be in place soon. American officials declined to comment Tuesday on whether a bank had been found.
American and Cuban officials have held three rounds of talks about re-establishing the embassies, but no further talks have been announced since the last round ended in Havana in March.
Mr. Obama had hoped for the embassies to be open before a regional summit meeting in April in Panama, where he met with Mr. Castro in the first face-to-face discussion between the leaders of the two countries in a half-century.
“We shall open our embassies,” Mr. Castro said after the meeting.
A version of this article appears in print on May 13, 2015, on page A3 of the New York edition with the headline: Cuba Ready to Exchange Diplomats, Raúl Castro Says. Order Reprints|  Today's Paper|Subscribe