The United States and Cuba held a second round of diplomatic talks in Washington, D.C. on Friday in effort to normalize relations between the two countries after decades of a frozen relationship.

The U.S. and Cuba began working towards restoring their severed ties after President Barack Obama announced a "new chapter" in U.S. relations with the Communist country on Dec. 17. Following his announcement, officials from both countries met in Havana, Cuba in January.

The delegations began the second round of talks Friday morning, headed by U.S. assistant secretary of state Roberta Jacobson and Chief of the Cuban Foreign Ministry's U.S. Division Josefina Vidal.

The former Cold War foes are working on opening embassies in each other's countries and exchanging prisoners. Cuba, however, has demanded the U.S. remove the country from its terrorism list. According to Cuba, U.S. sanctions on banks that do business with designed terrorist countries impedes it from conducting diplomatic affairs in the States.

On Wednesday, a senior State Department official told reporters that the Obama administration is reviewing Cuba's place on the terrorism sponsors list and that the request must be approved by Congress before Cuba's name can be removed, Reuters reports.

However, the official suggested that their progress in making diplomatic relations should not be contingent upcon the terrorism list, and Cuba's insistence on being removed from the list could delay the opening of embassies.

"Both of us have to come to the table in the spirit of getting to an agreement on these things, and not putting so many obstacles in the way that are not linked directly to how we function as diplomats in each other's countries," the State Department official said.

Ideally, the U.S and Cuba would like to reach an agreement on reopening embassies before the Summit of the Americas in Panama on April 10-11, where U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro are scheduled to meet for the first time since announcing their joint agreement in December.

"Both sides have an interest in doing this as quickly as possible," the official said, according to The Wall Street Journal. "I hope that we can be done in that kind of a time frame, but I just can't be sure."

"Most promising is the fact that the discussions are happening along the timeline that has been publicly shared," said Jason Marczak, deputy director of the Atlantic Council's Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center. "Even though there are going to be continuous points of disagreement between the U.S. and Cuba, that is not proving to in any way derail forward movement in the talks."

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