US and Cuba restore official ties and Cuban flag is raised in Washington

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US and Cuba have restored full diplomatic ties after more than 50 years
Cuban flag due to be installed in lobby of Washington's State Department
Secretary of State John Kerry to meet Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodriguez

By Associated Press and Julian Robinson for MailOnline

Published: 02:21 EST, 20 July 2015 | Updated: 06:27 EST, 20 July 2015

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The United States and Cuba have restored full diplomatic ties after sweeping aside more than five decades of tempestuous relations.

A Cuban flag was due to be raised in the lobby of the State Department in Washington in the early hours of today marking a new era of relations between the two nations.

Later today, the historic shift will be publicly memorialized when Cuban officials formally inaugurate their Washington embassy.

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A flagpole is raised at the Cuban Interest Section in Washington earlier this month in preparation for the historic re-opening of embassies in Havana and Washington

A Cuban gives the thumbs up from a balcony decorated with the US and Cuban flags in Havana in January after the two countries agreed to end their estrangement

Cuba's blue, red and white-starred flag will fly for the first time since the countries severed ties in 1961.

Secretary of State John Kerry will then meet his Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodriguez, and address reporters at a joint news conference.

The new era began with little fanfare when an agreement between the two nations to resume normal ties on July 20 came into force just after midnight Sunday and the diplomatic missions of each country were upgraded from interests sections to embassies.

It comes after five decades of tempestuous relations between Washington and Havana, hardened over the five decades since President John F. Kennedy first tangled with youthful revolutionary Fidel Castro over Soviet expansion in the Americas.

Without ceremony in the pre-dawn hours, maintenance workers were to hang the Cuban flag in the lobby of the State Department alongside those of other nations with which the U.S. has diplomatic relations.

The U.S. Interests Section in Havana plans to announce its upgrade to embassy status in a written statement on Monday, but the Stars and Stripes will not fly at the mission until Kerry visits in August for a ceremonial flag-raising.

US President Barack Obama shakes hands with Cuba's President Raul Castro on the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas on April 11 in Panama City

Today's events cap a remarkable change of course in U.S. policy toward the communist island under President Barack Obama

Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro (pictured) announced they would resume full diplomatic relations on December 17

Although normalization has taken center stage in the U.S.-Cuba relationship, there remains a deep ideological gulf between the nations and many issues still to resolve.

Among them are thorny disputes such as over mutual claims for economic reparations, Havana's insistence on the end of the 53-year-old trade embargo and U.S. calls for Cuba to improve on human rights and democracy.

Some U.S. lawmakers, including several prominent Republican presidential candidates, have vowed not to repeal the embargo and pledged to roll back Obama's moves on Cuba.

But Monday's events cap a remarkable change of course in U.S. policy toward the communist island under President Barack Obama, who had sought rapprochement with Cuba since he first took office and has progressively loosened restrictions on travel and remittances to the island.

Obama's efforts at engagement were frustrated for years by Cuba's imprisonment of U.S. Agency for International Development contractor Alan Gross on espionage charges.

Obama formally opens US diplomatic ties with Cuba

TIME IS A HEALER: A HISTORY OF KEY EVENTS IN US-CUBA RELATIONS

Relations between Fidel Castro (pictured) and the United States soured in the early 1960s

THE START: Fidel Castro's rebels take power as dictator Fulgencio Batista flees Cuba on Jan 1, 1959. The United States soon recognizes the new government. But relations begin to sour as Americans criticize summary trials and executions of Batista loyalists. In 1960 Cuba nationalizes U.S.-owned oil refineries after they refuse to process Soviet oil. Nearly all other U.S. businesses are expropriated soon afterward.

STANDOFF: The U.S. declares an embargo on most exports to Cuba in October 1960 and breaks diplomatic relations in January 1961. Three months later Castro declares Cuba a socialist state — just a day before the doomed U.S.-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion meant to topple Castro. Meanwhile, U.S. agents are organizing repeated efforts to assassinate the Cuban leader.

SHOWDOWN AVERTED: In October 1962, a U.S. blockade forces removal of Soviet nuclear missiles from Cuba after a standoff brings the world near nuclear war. U.S. President John F. Kennedy agrees privately not to invade Cuba.

FAILED NORMALIZATION: U.S. President Jimmy Carter tries to normalize relations with Cuba shortly after taking office in 1977, re-establishing diplomatic missions and negotiating release of thousands of prisoners. But conflicts over Cuba's military mission in Africa, tension caused by a flood of Cuban refugees in 1980 and the election of Ronald Reagan end the rapprochement.

CUBA ALONE: The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union devastates the Cuban economy, but the country limps along, first under Fidel and then, after he falls ill in 2006, under his brother Raul, head of the Cuban military.

EXILE CLASHES: Cuba's hostile relations with many Florida-based migrants repeatedly lead to confrontation. In 1996, Cuban jets shoot down two planes operated by the Brothers to the Rescue group dedicated to saving migrants found at sea, killing four. In 1999, U.S.-based relatives fight to keep Elian Gonzalez, rescued at sea at age 5 after his mother dies. U.S. officials finally wrench him away and send him back to his father in Cuba in 2000.

PRISONERS: The U.S. arrests five Cuban spies in 1998 and Cuba mounts an international campaign to free them, saying they were defending the island against U.S.-based terror attempts. In December 2009, Cuba arrests USAID contractor Alan Gross, accusing him of subversion. That stifles incipient efforts to improve U.S.-Cuba ties under President Barack Obama.

BREAKTHROUGH: Obama and Raul Castro announce December 17, 2014 they are restoring diplomatic ties and exchanging prisoners, including Gross and the remaining three members of Cuban Five spy ring.

REMOVAL FROM TERRORISM LIST: The Obama administration formally removes Cuba from a U.S. terrorism blacklist as part of the process of normalizing relations between the Cold War foes.

AGREEMENT NOTES EXCHANGED: Pending issues resolved and the U.S. and Cuba exchange diplomatic notes agreeing that the date for the restoration of full relations would be July 20.

DIPLOMATIC TIES RESTORED: Agreement between the two nations to resume normal ties on July 20 comes into force just after midnight Sunday and the diplomatic missions of each country are upgraded from interests sections to embassies.

But months of secret negotiations led in December to Gross's release, along with a number of political prisoners in Cuba and the remaining members of a Cuban spy ring jailed in the United States.

On December 17, Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced they would resume full diplomatic relations.

Declaring the longstanding policy a failure that had not achieved any of its intended results, Obama declared that the U.S. could not keep doing the same thing and expect a change. Thus, he said work would begin apace on normalization.

That process dragged on until the U.S. removed Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism in late May and then bogged down over issues of U.S. diplomats' access to ordinary Cubans.

On July 1, however, the issues were resolved and the U.S. and Cuba exchanged diplomatic notes agreeing that the date for the restoration of full relations would be July 20.

'It's a historic moment,' said longtime Cuban diplomat and analyst Carlos Alzugaray.

A worker removes the Cuban Interests Section sign in Washington, just days before the building was due to be accredited as the Cuban Embassy

A Cuban gives the thumbs up from his balcony decorated with the US and Cuban flags in Havana in January after the two countries agreed to end their estrangement

'The significance of opening the embassies is that trust and respect that you can see, both sides treating the other with trust and respect,' he said.

'That doesn't mean there aren't going to be conflicts — there are bound to be conflicts — but the way that you treat the conflict has completely changed.'

Cuba's ceremony at the stately 16th Street mansion in Washington that has been operating as an interests section under the auspices of the Swiss embassy will be attended by some 500 guests, including a 30-member delegation of diplomatic, cultural and other leaders from the Caribbean nation, headed by Foreign Minister Rodriguez.

The U.S. will be represented at the event by Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson, who led U.S. negotiators in six months of talks leading to the July 1 announcement, and Jeffrey DeLaurentis, the chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana who will now become charge d'affaires.

Although the Interests Section in Havana won't see the pomp and circumstance of a flag-raising on Monday, workers there have already drilled holes on the exterior to hang signage flown in from the U.S., and arranged to print new business cards and letterhead that say 'Embassy' instead of 'Interests Section.'

Secretary of State John Kerry (pictured) will meet his Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodriguez, and address reporters at a joint news conference

What for years was a lonely flagpole outside the glassy six-story edifice on Havana's seafront Malecon boulevard recently got a rehab, complete with a paved walkway.

Every day for the last week, employees have been hanging hand-lettered signs on the fence counting down, in Spanish, to Monday.

Both interests sections have technically operated as part of Switzerland's embassies in Washington and Havana.

The Swiss also were caretakers for the former American Embassy and ambassador's residence from 1961 to 1977, when the U.S. had no diplomatic presence in the country at all.