INDIRA LAKSHMANAN:

You're absolutely right.

While John Kerry was trying to accentuate the positive and say that, look, we have seen the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, we had normal ties with Vietnam, with whom we fought a war, let's forget this and put it behind us, we saw the foreign minister of Cuba saying, look, you tell us about human rights, but that in fact we have some issues with the way you deal with human rights.

They brought up Ferguson. They brought up police brutality, unequal pay between men and women, race relations. A lot of these are common talking points that the Cuban government uses against the American government.

And later, when we asked Secretary Kerry about it, he said: Well, that shows they're on the defensive. We're pressing them on human rights. We're pressing them on personal freedoms. And this is something which we're going to be working on as part of the dialogue.

And Kerry made very, very clear that these talks are going to be restarting September 10 and 11 here in Havana. Then there will be a delegation coming back to the United States. And if they don't make progress on a number of issues — some of them are easier, like cooperation on environmental issues — and some of them are much harder, the issues of paying for the claims for the seized property and also the issues of human rights.

So he made it very clear that some of these are really tough issues, and he thinks it is going to take time. But if they don't make some progress, I think — you know, I think they don't want to see backsliding. They are going to be continuing to press the Cubans on all of these issues, which Kerry referred to as issues of conscience.