U.S.-Cuba talks on direct mail service proposed for next month

Posted on Thursday, 08.29.13



U.S.-Cuba talks on direct mail service proposed for next month

BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

JTAMAYO@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM



Cuba has proposed that a U.S. government delegation visit Havana next

month for a second round of talks since June on resuming direct postal

services, interrupted for the past 50 years, knowledgeable officials

said Wednesday.



Mail service between the United States and Cuba was cancelled in 1963 as

Washington tightened economic sanctions on Havana. Letters and packages

now go through third countries such as Mexico, Canada or Panama.



Cuba proposed the talks be held Sept. 16 in Havana, according to the

officials, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to

comment on the issue. The U.S. Department of State said it had no

immediate comment on this report.



Talks on reopening the postal service took place in 2009 in Havana, but

the Obama administration cancelled the contacts after U.S. government

contractor Alan P. Gross was sentenced to 15 years in a Havana prison

for delivering sophisticated communications equipment to Cuba's tiny

Jewish community.



The mail talks were resumed in Washington June 17-18, however, and the

following month the two 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 U.S.

embargo on the island.



Cuba presented an analysis of its international mail services at the

talks, according to the declaration published in the

government-controlled Cubadebate web site, and "agreed to continue the

conversations in the coming months."



State Department officials maintained at the time that the mail talks

were purely technical in nature and did not reflect any change in the

U.S. policy toward Cuba.



The United States is the destination of one out of every four packages

and letters mailed from Cuba, according to official Havana figures,

while mail and packages sent from the United States account for 42

percent of the total received on the island.



The June talks were headed by Lea Emerson, director of international

postal matters for the U.S. Postal Service, and José Ramón Cabañas

Rodríguez, head of the Cuban diplomatic mission in Washington.



Source: "U.S.-Cuba talks on direct mail service proposed for next month

- Cuba - MiamiHerald.com" -

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/08/29/3592264/us-cuba-talks-on-direct-mail.html