U.S. offers to resume talks with Cuba on migration

Posted 05 24 2009 2:31AM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department said on Friday it had offered to resume talks with Cuba about Cuban migration to the United States, a fresh sign of U.S. President Barack Obama's effort to engage the communist state.

The talks were last held in 2003 and were unilaterally suspended by the United States in 2004.

"We have offered to resume the talks," State Department spokeswoman Heide Bronke said, saying the offer was made by U.S. diplomats at a meeting with Cuban diplomats in Washington at 4:30 p.m. on Friday.

The migration talks, initiated during the Reagan administration, became more regular following accords reached in the mid-1990s that were intended to avoid an exodus of Cuban refugees to the United States.

The administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush suspended the talks in January 2004 saying Cuba had stymied them by refusing to discuss key issues such as giving exit permits to all Cubans who get U.S. visas.

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Bill Trott)