By Lesley Wroughton and Daniel Trotta
HAVANA (Reuters) - A senior U.S. diplomat in Cuba for negotiations with Havana on restoring long-frozen diplomatic relations met a group of dissidents on Friday, seeking to underline Washington's concern over human rights but irritating the island's communist government.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson, the highest-ranking U.S. government official to visit the island in nearly 40 years, held a breakfast meeting with the dissidents a day after talks with Cuban government officials. The State Department said it was an opportunity for Jacobson to exchange views and hear their perspectives.
But Havana has stressed that efforts to normalise ties should not be accompanied by meddling in its internal affairs. Cuban officials expressed concern beforehand over the planned meeting, a U.S. official told Reuters.
The head of the Cuban delegation to the talks, Josefina Vidal, was dismissive of the meeting later.
"This is exactly one of the differences we have with the U.S. government because for us, this is not just genuine, legitimate Cuban civil society," Vidal, who is Jacobson's counterpart at the Cuban Foreign Ministry, told the MSNBC television show "Andrea Mitchell Reports," referring to the dissidents.
"This small group of people don't represent Cuban society, don't represent the interests of the Cuban people. So that's a big difference with the United States government," she added.
The Cuban government rarely comments on dissidents, and when it does, it often charges them with being unrepresentative of the population and puppets of the United States.
Thursday's talks about re-establishing diplomatic ties, severed by Washington in 1961, were the first since U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced on Dec. 17 they would seek to reverse decades of hostility between the two countries.
But the issue of political freedoms was bound to be a point of friction.
Castro has said that restoring ties with its old Cold War foe does not mean Cuba intends to give up its socialist principles. In a statement on Thursday on the talks, the Cuban government said relations between the countries should be based on mutual respect and non-interference in internal affairs.
Nonetheless, Jacobson told reporters after her meeting with the dissidents that human rights and free speech were a priority for the United States at the inaugural talks.
"There is no doubt that human rights remains the centre of our policy and it is crucial that we continue to both speak out about human rights publicly and directly with the Cuban government," she said.
"It is obviously part of what we are talking about when we say we have profound disagreement with Cuban government when we talk about democracy and human rights," she added.
HOUSE WITH ECHOES OF FORMER TIES
Her meeting with dissidents took place at the residence of the chief of the U.S. Interests Section, Jeffrey DeLaurentis, in Havana. The activists were bused there to avoid being stopped by security police posted nearby.
The house was built by the United States in the early 1950s to represent the importance the State Department placed on its relationship at the time with Cuba. That was just years before the revolution led by Raul Castro's older brother, Fidel Castro, that ousted dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
Among the activists who met with Jacobson was Jose Daniel Ferrer, founder of the Union Patriotica de Cuba (UNPACU), many of whose members were part of 53 political prisoners released earlier this month under a U.S.-Cuba deal to launch the talks.
Jacobson told reporters the path to rebuilding ties would be long and complex, cautioning that it was too soon to judge whether the initial talks could eventually lead to a normalization of relations.
"I have learned ... it is never a good idea to draw conclusions after the first discussion," Jacobson said.
While re-establishing diplomatic ties is a matter of mutual consent between the two countries, the broader goal of normalizing trade and travel faces greater obstacles - in particular the comprehensive U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.
Obama, a Democrat, has loosened some restrictions on business with the island but needs the Republican-controlled Congress to lift the embargo.
Critics of his policy shift, such as Cuban-American Republican Senator Marco Rubio, say Obama should not be rewarding Cuba when it is not changing its one-party system.
As part of the loosened restrictions, Washington has said Americans who travel to Cuba will be allowed to use U.S.-issued credit cards. MasterCard Inc said on Friday it would be the first company to remove a block on such transactions, starting on March 1.
Cuba also told the Americans during the talks that it wants to be removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism before re-establishing diplomatic ties.
In immigration talks on Wednesday, Cuba deplored the U.S. granting safe haven to Cubans with special protections denied to other nationalities, while the Americans vowed to stand by the so-called Cuban Adjustment Act.
(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Frances Kerry)
