A year after the beginning of the rapprochement between the United States and Cuba, with diplomatic relations between the two countries fully reestablished, Washington and Havana have begun to tackle the contentious issue of compensation for properties confiscated during the Caribbean nation's 1959 revolution.

The Obama administration wants Cuba's communist government to pay between $7 billion and $8 billion to American citizens and companies who lost their possessions following Fidel Castro's armed revolt. Havana, on the other hand, contends the United States has cost the nation some $121 billion in damages due to the suffocating embargo it maintains on the island, Agence France-Presse reported.

Mary McLeod, the acting legal adviser for the Department of State, will represent the United States in the talks, the Miami Herald reported. On Tuesday, negotiators from both countries met in the Cuban capital to take a first step to resolving the issue, though State Department spokesman John Kirby was quick to lower expectations, AFP noted.

"The meeting is the first step in what we expect to be a long and complex process," Kirby said. "The United States views the resolution of outstanding claims as a top priority for normalization."

Cuban President Raúl Castro, meanwhile, echoed the warnings, by predicting the talks would be "long and complex." Other contentious issues, including the future of the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, are not even included in these talks.

Nevertheless, Richard Feinberg, a Cuba expert at the Brookings Institution who published a report this month proposing possible solutions, told The Washington Post the negotiations are a huge step toward further normalization of relations between the neighboring countries 

"Merely for the two nations to sit down and talk in an orderly, professional manner about claims, after so many decades, is a major achievement," Feinberg explained. "Settlement of U.S. claims would be a huge step forward toward fully normalizing U.S.-Cuban economic relations and would give live ammunition to those who favor lifting the economic embargo."