Cuba Proposes Direct Mail Service Talks With US

MIAMI, Florida CMC – Cuba has proposed that a United States government delegation should visit Havana this month for a second round of talks on resuming direct postal services.

Mail service between the United States and Cuba was cancelled in 1963 as Washington tightened economic sanctions on Havana, as a result, letters and packages now go through third countries, such as Mexico, Canada or Panama.

According to a report in the Miami Herald, Cuba proposed the talks be held September 16 in Havana.

Talks on reopening the postal service took place in 2009 in Havana, but the Obama administration cancelled the contacts after US government sub-contractor Alan P. Gross was sentenced to 15 years in a Havana jail for delivering sophisticated communications equipment to Cuba’s tiny Jewish community.

The Cuban government claimed that Gross was involved in espionage and sought to destabilize the revolution.

The mail talks however, resumed in Washington from June 17-18. The following month, both sides also renewed talks on migration issues, considered far more important to the bilateral relations.

After the June talks, the Cuban government declared that those meetings had been satisfactory and helpful even though the issue of direct mail service was subject to unspecified “obstacles” because of the US embargo on the Spanish-speaking Caribbean island, the Herald said.

Cuba presented an analysis of its international mail services at the talks, according to the declaration published in the government-controlled Cuba debate web site, and “agreed to continue the conversations in the coming months.”

But the US Department of State said the mail talks were purely technical in nature and did not reflect any change in the US policy toward Cuba.