Washington, September 26 (RHC)-- Cuba and the United States have set up a joint business council aimed at building a strategic commercial relationship, establish links in the entrepreneurial sector and facilitate the identification of trade opportunities.

According to the Cuban Embassy in Washington, the meeting to set up the council took place at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the U.S. capital.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Thomas Donahue said that the council will work to guarantee that the two countries benefit from trade, investment and economic cooperation.  The president of the Cuban Chamber of Commerce, Orlando Hernandez, stressed the investment and trade opportunities that U.S. companies would find in Cuba once Washington's economic blockade is lifted, since the over-50-year unilateral U.S. anti-Cuba policy is the main obstacle to the development of bilateral relations between Washington and Havana.

Whatever the future scenario may be, the US-Cuba Business Council has a big task ahead, which is to work for the normalization of bilateral commercial relations, said the Cuban official.

Hernandez noted that the Cuban Chamber of Commerce sees the new council not as a mechanism limited to facilitate exports or businesses of U.S. companies, but as a mechanism aimed at the main objective which is working towards the total, rapid and unconditional lifting of the economic blockade against Cuba.

This would be the only context in which our companies could develop their potentials, Hernandez added, and acknowledged the active role played by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, particularly by its president Thomas Donahue, in the new scenario of relations between the United States and Cuba.