Although Kerry did not outline details of how the US plans to improve relations with Venezuela, he did cite recent talks between US state department counselor Thomas Shannon and Venezuelan foreign minister Delcy Rodriguez in April in Caracas, and last month in Haiti.

The committee also passed amendments to a Financial Services appropriations bill to allow banks and U.S. businesses to finance sales of U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba as well as lift restrictions on ships that call at Cuban ports.

The measure will now move to the full Senate for a vote. One man was arrested after throwing a red paint bomb into a crowd.

“With travel to Cuba now surging, existing Cuban hotels are full and hotel companies from other countries are racing to tie up as numerous new hotels as they can before the likes of Marriott and our U.S. competitors show up”, Sorenson said.

When asked if there would now be a greater political opening in Cuba, he retorted that that had already happened in 1959, the year that Fidel Castro led the communist revolution. He will be the first US top diplomat to visit the Cuban capital since 1945.

The United States “should respect other countries’ sovereignty”, said Gonzalez, a Salvadoran-American.

Roger Noriega, an American Enterprise Institute analyst and a former U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, also expressing concern about Cuba’s human rights record, said “I think we have had to lower our standards in order to raise our flag in Havana”. That building has again become the U.S. Embassy in Havana.

Nevertheless, in spite of the “new beginning” in relations between the two countries, much remains to be discussed before normalization of ties are to take place, something which Kerry says may be “long and complex”.

Some US legislators, including several prominent Republican presidential candidates, have pledged not to repeal the embargo and pledged to roll back Obama’s moves on Cuba.

Rodriguez described the meeting with Kerry as constructive, during which they reviewed the topics discussed by Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro during the seventh Summit of the Americas in Panama, and especially progress made since the December 17 announcement of the US-Cuba rapprochement.

“We understand that Cuba has strong feelings about it”, Kerry said.

Relations between Venezuela and the United States have been tense since socialist Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1999. Thus, he said work would begin apace on normalization. Cuba has been removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, and most recently, the promise of diplomatic access for the U.S.to non-governmental Cubans was gained.

With severed diplomatic ties in 1961, Cold War.

Some 500 guests, including a 30-member delegation of diplomatic, cultural and other leaders from the Caribbean nation, attended the Cuban ceremony at the stately 16th Street mansion in Washington that has been operating as an interests section under the auspices of the Swiss embassy.

Kerry is expected to visit Cuba on August. 14 to preside over a flag-raising ceremony at the U.S. embassy in Havana.