by James Tweedie

CUBAN and US representatives will meet in Washington tomorrow for the third round of talks on normalising diplomatic and economic relations between the two nations.

Gustavo Machin of the Cuban Foreign Ministry’s United States office said that US President Barack Obama’s decision to remove Havana from the list of state sponsors of terrorism had opened the way for the re-establishment of diplomatic ties.

But Mr Machin stressed that US diplomats would have to abide by international law and conventions governing their behaviour.

Cuban President Raul Castro recently expressed concern to his US counterpart that US diplomats in Havana would continue illegal subversive activities — such activities have long been the speciality of the US interests section at the Swiss embassy.

The news of the latest talks coincided with an announcement that three of the Miami Five Cuban anti-terrorist heroes would begin a two-week tour of South Africa on the same day.

They will meet members of the ANC, Friends of Cuba Society and Cuban volunteer health workers in the country.

The Miami Five served lengthy and unjust jail sentences in US prisons after exposing anti-Cuban terrorist organisations in Florida.

The three who will visit South Africa —Gerardo Hernandez, Fernando Gonzalez and René Gonzalez — are also veterans of the Cuban expeditionary force which fought in the Angolan liberation war of the 1970s and ’80s.

Cuba’s intervention in that war led to Namibia’s independence from South Africa and is widely credited with forcing the apartheid regime to negotiate with the ANC.