HAVANA, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- After half a century of tension between Cuba and the United States, there have been signs in the past year that the frosty relationship between the two countries is slowly thawing. Can spring be far behind?
Three months after moving into the Oval Office, U.S. President Barack Obama saw to it that the Secretaries of State, Treasury and Commerce lift restrictions on family members traveling to Cuba andremove restrictions on remittances to families in Cuba. Obama also saw to it that telecommunications services linking the two countries and donations of consumer telecommunications devices to Cuba be authorized.
This flexibility realized some of Obama's promised policy changes towards the Caribbean island state.
For its part, Cuba described the U.S. move as being on the right track. Still, for Cuba, this was not enough: Cuban President Raul Castro has called the move "achieving only the minimum."
In an op-ed written for a Cuban newspaper, former state leader Fidel Castro said: "Obama's speech (at the Cuban American National Foundation in Miami on remittances) can be translated as a formula for hunger for the country (Cuba)."
The aging leader was not exaggerating, since Obama has not lifted the U.S. commercial, economic and financial embargo against Cuba, first enforced in part in October 1960 and coming into full effect in February 1962.
So far, 187 of the 192 members of the United Nations have demanded the lifting of the U.S. unilateral embargo, which Cuba alleged to have cost it direct and indirect losses of 96 billion U.S. dollars.
Incumbent Cuban state leader Raul Castro, however, expressed his readiness to talk with the United States on all issues, including human rights and freedom of the press but without conditions or ideological concessions.
This year, Cuba has already allowed U.S. consular accesses to some 20 Cuban-Americans detained on the island.
The acting Cuban president said that his country remains open to normalized relations with the United States, which used to exert economic and political dominance over the island after the Spanish influence ended there.
Though the Americans used to hold the majority of foreign investment holdings and the bulk of exports and imports, the Cuban Revolution in 1959 cut their stake in the country's affairs and severed relations between the two countries.
In June this year, the United States made a conciliatory gesture by supporting the Organization of American States (OAS) to lift its sanctions against Cuba.
Originally, it was the United States that orchestrated the OAS collective action against Cuba by offering aid to Latin American countries in return for joining in the sanctions against Cuba, one of the 21 founding member states of the regional organization.
What the Cuban authorities cannot readily agree with is Obama's logic of not dealing with the past but only with the future.
The Cuban president asserted that it is up to the United States and not to Cuba to do more to improve relations, because "Cuba has not imposed any sanction against the United States or its citizens."
"There is not political or moral pretext that justifies this policy (of keeping the embargo in place)," said Castro.
The Cuban authorities claimed that the United States now has a "historical opportunity" to change its policy toward Cuba by lifting the embargo. However, Obama does not seem ready for a "real change," and despite occasional warm spells between the two countries, spring is still far off.
