By limonta on Skatehive
In the midst of growing tension with the United States, a high-ranking Cuban diplomat has revealed to the alternative left-wing outlet Drop Site that Cuba is willing to offer a lump sum as compensation for the American properties nationalized or expropriated by the then still nascent Cuban Revolution during 1960, whose current total value—with interests—is estimated at around 9 billion dollars. This is a historic issue that for successive U.S. administrations has been a sine qua non one for advancing any understanding with Havana, and, in fact, it is among those that the so-called Helms-Burton law specifies must be settled for a Cuban government to be considered "democratically elected", so then a U.S. president can proceed to end the relentless sanctions regime that I understand began with Eisenhower. (Although formally it was Kennedy who activated its current regulatory configuration relying on the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, the Trading with the Enemy Act, and other prerogatives