US presses Cuba on 1970s fugitives

The United States and Cuba will open talks about two longtime fugitives as part of a new dialogue about law-enforcement cooperation made possible by President Barack Obama's decision to remove Cuba from a list of state sponsors of terror, the State Department announced on Wednesday.

Cuban officials and ordinary citizens alike hailed Obama's action to remove the island from the list, saying it heals a decades-old insult to national pride and clears the way to restore diplomatic relations swiftly.

State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said Cuba had agreed to talks about two most-wanted US fugitives: William Morales and Joanne Chesimard. Chesimard, aka Assata Shakur, was granted asylum by Fidel Castro after she escaped from a US prison where she was serving a sentence for killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1973. The US and Cuba will also discuss the case of Morales, a Puerto Rican nationalist wanted in connection with bombings in New York in the 1970s.