US owes Cuba millions of dollars, Fidel Castro claims as Kerry reopens US embassy in Havana

August 14 will remain as a historic day for the diplomatic relation between Cuba and the United States. The U.S. embassy in Havana has been reopened after over 54 years.

Cuba earlier reopened its embassy in Washington, and has now allowed the reopening of the U.S. embassy in the country. The historic occasion was celebrated in an event presided over by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Havana. This is the first time in 70 years that a U.S. state secretary visited Cuba.

Cuban leader Fidel Castro earlier said in an open letter that the United States owed millions of dollars to Cuba due to its trade embargo. He did not mention anything about reopening the U.S. embassy in Havana.

In the open letter, Castro talks about the World War II and how it financially benefited the U.S. government. “Almost all of the gold in the world landed in the vaults of the United States,” he wrote in the letter published on Granma.cu, “Today it is estimated that the entirety of this country’s gold reserves reached 8,133.5 tonnes of this metal.”

The embargo was imposed 53 years back, and has not been lifted yet. After the senior Castro retired from the national leadership in 2008, his brother Raul Castro stepped up.

The junior Castro and U.S. President Barack Obama mutually decided in December to normalise the diplomatic relation between the countries. One may wonder if the normalisation was possible had the senior Castro been the leader. By not mentioning about the reopening of the U.S. embassy in Cuba, he may have indicated his lack of interest in normalising relations with the United States.

The BBC reported Castro had survived more than 600 assassination attempts in his lifetime. He eventually became the longest serving non-royal leader of the 20th Century. He took personal charge of the defensive operation when the CIA sponsored an unsuccessful invasion by 1,500 Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.

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