US, Cuba to hold new round of migration talks

HAVANA, (Reuters) – U.S. and Cuban delegations will meet  next week in Havana in the latest round of talks on migration  issues, but with few hopes for any significant accomplishments,  U.S. officials said yesterday.

It will be the fourth meeting on the topic since the talks  resumed under President Barack Obama, but like other aspects of  U.S.-Cuba relations they are bogged down by Cuba’s detention of  American aid contractor Alan Gross for the past 13 months.
“We’re not expecting much out of this,” a U.S. official said of  the talks, which will be held on Wednesday.

The United States has said there will be little progress in its  long-hostile relations with the communist-led island until Gross,  61, is freed.

So far, Cuban officials have hinted that Gross was involved in  espionage and said he brought in illegal satellite communications  equipment, but they have not charged him with a crime. As they have in the three previous meetings since Obama took  office, negotiators will discuss the state of a 1994 agreement to  maintain orderly migration and avoid mass exoduses from Cuba like  the 1980 Mariel boatlift and 1994 wave of boat people.

Cuba has asked to send more consular agents to the United  States, while the United States has pushed for an end to travel  restrictions for diplomats in both countries.
Cuba also wants an end to the U.S. policy of granting Cubans  who reach U.S. shores almost automatic residency, which Havana says  encourages illegal and dangerous migration.

While migration talks top the agenda, the two countries who  have had little direct communication over the past five decades  usually bring up other issues, such as Alan Gross.

In past meetings, U.S. officials have said they have demanded  that he be freed and the Cubans did not respond.

The United States says Gross was simply installing Internet  access for Jewish groups, but he was in Cuba under a federally  funded program promoting political change on the island.