Raul Castro: Cuba willing to sit down with US

[Bacchus4.0]

9. US response

from article in OP:

Later Thursday, Mike Hammer, assistant secretary for public affairs at the U.S. State Department, said that before there can be meaningful engagement, Cuba must institute democratic reforms, improve human rights and release Alan Gross, a Maryland native serving 15 years for bringing satellite and other communications equipment into Cuba illegally while on a USAID-funded democracy-building program.

“Our message is very clear to the Castro government: They need to begin to allow for the political freedom of expression that the Cuban people demand, and we are prepared to discuss with them how this can be furthered,” Hammer said. “They are the ones ultimately responsible for taking those actions, and today we have not seen them.”

Hammer highlighted the brief detention this week of dozens of dissidents outside the funeral of prominent Oswaldo Paya, who died in a car crash last weekend, saying “the authoritarian tendencies are very evident on each and every day in Cuba.”

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Regarding Paya and dissidents Castro said this:

“Some small factions are doing nothing less than trying to lay the groundwork and hoping that one day what happened in Libya will happen here, what they’re trying to make happen in Syria,” Castro said.

Looks like no Cuban spring.