US and Cuba hold highest level meeting in over 50 years

US secretary of state John Kerry and Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez have held talks in Panama ahead of the tri-annual Summit of the Americas, the highest level meeting between the two countries in more than half a century.

Officials described the meeting on Thursday evening as "lengthy". US President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro are attending the summit and although no formal talks are scheduled are expected to meet on the sidelines of the summit in the coming days.

On Thursday, Mr Obama hinted that Cuba could soon be removed from the US list of state sponsors of terror, a move that would help Havana access international finance, including from multilateral lenders.

Full normalisation of relations remains a long haul, though. For one, it requires an act of US Congress to remove Washington's half century trade embargo against Havana.

"The moves to lift the blockade, while small are significant. But the blockade remains," Rodrigo Malmierca Diaz, Cuban minister of foreign trade and investment, told a parallel summit of business leaders. Mr Malmierca said Cuba hoped for $2.5bn of foreign investment a year, multiples of current levels.

The thaw has produced something of a Cuba frenzy among businesses. US executives said they were interested in investing in Cuba - a market comparable to the Dominican Republic's, as Francisco Aristeguieta, Citigroup's chief executive for Latin America, put it - under the right conditions.

"We have always been an advocate of free trade and ending the embargo, and once it goes we will certainly explore Cuban opportunities. But our business does not depend on 11m people," added Marcel Smits, chief financial officer of Cargill.

However, the mood soured on Wednesday, when Cuban government supporters aggressively heckled a group of dissidents. Separately, 25 former Ibero-American presidents, including Felipe Gonzalez of Spain, presented a petition decrying the erosion of political rights in Venezuela, Cuba's closest political ally.

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Despite the US rapprochement with Cuba, Mr Obama faces a tricky summit.

"There is a kind of default anti-Americanism to the summit - inevitable given the asymmetries. In some countries it simply plays well at home," said Frank Mora, director of Florida International University's Latin America centre and a former senior Pentagon official.

The biggest flashpoint is Venezuela. Regional leaders have decried a US decision last month to label Venezuela a national security threat and sanction seven officials accused of human rights abuses. Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan president, has tabled a summit motion condemning the measure - although it is unlikely to make it into a final communique.

"Will there be anti-imperialist speeches? Sure. But can Maduro trump all that goodness about Cuba, immigration and drugs? There may be some roughness around the edges, but that's all," said Mr Mora.

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