Senior U.S. diplomat to return to Havana for new Cuba talks

(Reuters) - The U.S. government is moving as quickly as possible to decide whether to remove Cuba from the U.S. list of terrorism-sponsoring countries, a senior State Department official said on Friday ahead of a new round of talks in Havana next week.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, offered no timetable for a decision but said that Washington disagreed with Havana's effort to link the issue to broader negotiations on reopening embassies and restoring diplomatic relations that were severed more than 50 years ago.

Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson will travel to Havana on Sunday for discussions likely to begin on Monday aimed at normalizing ties, the official told reporters on a conference call.

U.S. and Cuban diplomats have met twice this year, the last time in Washington at the end of February, since President Barack Obama and President Raul Castro made a breakthrough announcement on Dec. 17 that upended decades of enmity.

Washington still hopes that the United States and communist-ruled Cuba will be able reopen their embassies, as Obama said in a Reuters interview last week, by the time of a Western Hemisphere summit in Panama in mid-April, the U.S. official said.