“I think it’s important to hemispheric relations generally, but we certainly hope it doesn’t dominate the summit,” Harper told Fox News in an interview ahead of the summit that began Friday evening.

“There are much more important issues to discuss than Cuban-American relations,” he said.

The issue of Cuba, whose membership in the Organization of American States was suspended in 1962, will likely become a topic of discussion at the summit.

The Canadian prime minister said his country is “obviously worried about” moves to erect trade barriers worldwide, saying the biggest threat to the economy is an increase in protectionism because the increased protectionism would mean “recession or worse for a very long time.”

“We think it is very important, very important for the health of the hemisphere that we continue to bolster moves towards liberalized market economies and we need trade to do that,” Harper said.

Harper said it is the time for Havana to reciprocate in response to the goodwill moves taken by the Obama administration, including easing restrictions on family travel and remittances to Cuba.

The U.S. president on Monday announced easing restrictions on travel and money transfer to Cuba, and opening the green light to U.S. companies to explore the markets of telecommunications and satellite radio and TV services in the Caribbean country.

Although Obama stopped short of eliminating the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba imposed 47 years ago, it has been seen as a major policy shift from the Bush administration’s hawkish approach toward Cuba.

“We have sent messages to the U.S. government in private and in public that we are willing to discuss everything, whenever they want,” Castro said in an impassioned speech to a meeting of leftist leaders in Venezuela on the anniversary of a failed U.S.-led invasion of Cuba in 1961.

“Human rights, press freedom, political prisoners, everything, everything, everything they want to talk about,” he said, insisting only that the talks be on equal terms and without challenging Cuba’s sovereignty.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Wood welcomed Castro’s latest comments but repeated that Cuba must release political prisoners, among other moves.

He avoided referring to conditions being met for talks to start, but made clear Washington expects Havana to take actions.

“If indeed those reports are true, I think that is a positive step. But again, as the secretary (of State Hillary Clinton) said, we urge Cuba to release political prisoners, to allow for the free flow of information and freedom of assembly,” said Wood on Friday.

“If the Cuban government’s interested in having a substantive, serious dialogue with the United States, it needs to address not just concerns of the United States and other countries, but of the Cuban people,” Woods said.

Cuba is said to have about 200 political prisoners, whom it considers mercenaries for the United States. It also severely limits freedom of expression, puts limits on foreign travel by its citizens and does not hold multi-party elections.

SOME RESTRICTIONS LIFTED

Castro has taken some steps to open up Cuba’s economy since replacing his brother Fidel Castro as the leader of Cuba in 2008 after nearly five decades.

His comments follow the decision this week by U.S. President Barack Obama to lift restrictions on Cuban Americans’ travel to the island and let U.S. firms bid for telecommunications licenses.

“We look for the Cuban government to reciprocate those steps that President Obama just announced,” said Wood.

Obama said on Thursday there were a range of steps Cuba could take to recast relations between the two countries, which have been virtually frozen in the decades since Cuba’s 1959 Revolution.

“My guidepost in U.S.-Cuba policy is going to be how can we encourage Cuba to be respectful of the rights of its people, freedom of political speech, political participation, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of travel,” he said during a news conference in Mexico.

The United States still imposes an economic embargo against Cuba and prevents most of its citizens from visiting the island 90 miles from Florida’s coast.

Cuba accuses Washington of imperial behavior and frequently points out that the U.S. record on human rights is far from perfect.

In April 1961, the United States backed an invasion by Cuban exiles who attacked the island’s Bay of Pigs beach in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro, only to be defeated by Cuban forces.

Cuban leaders have spoken well of Obama and expressed openness to dialogue, but eschewed the idea of U.S.-mandated preconditions on what they consider domestic issues.

The Obama administration intends to allow Americans to visit relatives in Cuba and send money back to their families in the communist island nation, senior U.S. officials said Saturday.

President Obama plans to announce the policy change before the Summit of the Americas April 17-19 in Trinidad and Tobago, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not been made.

Although some restrictions have been eased temporarily in legislation Obama signed last month, lifting the bans would meet a pledge he made during the presidential campaign and could signal a new openness with Cuba.

“The intent is to try to test the waters and see if we can get Cuba to move in another direction,” one official said. “One way of getting the regime to open up may be to let people travel, increase exchanges and get money flowing to the island.”

The official said there is no plan to lift the decades-old embargo on the island and that the move “is just the president fulfilling a campaign promise.”

As a candidate, Obama promised to allow unlimited family travel and remittances to Cuba. “It’s time to let Cuban-Americans see their mothers and fathers, their sisters and their brothers,” he said in a speech last May in Miami. “It’s time to let Cuban-American money make their families less dependent on the Castro regime.”

There are growing calls in Congress to repeal restrictions on Cuba.

Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has proposed appointing a special envoy to look into reshaping the overall relationship. Officials said Saturday that Lugar’s idea would be considered.

On March 11, Obama signed legislation that rolled back rules imposed by the Bush administration that limited Cuban travel to just two weeks every three years by Americans and confined visits to immediate family members.

Now, Americans with relatives in Cuba can visit once a year, stay as long as they wish and spend up to $179 a day. Those changes, which affect an estimated 1.5 million Americans, remain in place until the current budget year ends on Sept. 30.

Some lawmakers backed by business and farm groups seeing new opportunities in Cuba are advocating even broader revisions in the trade and travel bans imposed after Fidel Castro took power in Havana in 1959.

Last week, a bipartisan group of senators, including Lugar, proposed legislation that would prevent the president from stopping travel to Cuba by all Americans except in cases of war, imminent danger to public health or threats to the physical safety of U.S. travelers.

There is an identical bill in the House with 120 co-sponsors.

The efforts have until now made little headway because of strong political resistance led by Florida’s influential Cuban-American community. But the situation has changed over the past year after Castro ceded power to his brother Raul and Obama won the White House.

In a court filing in Washington, the Justice Department dropped the term “enemy combatant” to refer to those being held in Guantanamo. It also said that the government’s authority to continue to jail terrorist suspects would hinge on proving that they “authorized, committed or aided” the Sept. 11 attacks or that they “were part of or substantially supported” the Taliban or al-Qaida.

Some lawyers said the decision not to use the term “enemy combatant” marked the death knell for military commissions, which Congress established specifically to try Guantanamo detainees. Under federal law, the commissions have authority to try only persons declared “unlawful alien enemy combatants.”

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, who defended Osama bin Laden’s driver before such a commission, said Friday’s move effectively gave the war court “jurisdiction over a category of persons that doesn’t exist.”

“There is no such thing as an unlawful enemy combatant,” he said. “International law has never recognized such a category of persons, and the filing is a welcome sign of America’s return to the rule of law and community of nations.”

Others said the filing meant the U.S. had no right to hold their clients. Air Force Reserve Maj. David Frakt, an attorney for a young Afghan at Guantanamo, said the new definition means that his client, Mohammed Jawad, gets to go home.

Jawad, now 23, is accused of throwing a grenade in December 2002 that wounded two U.S. soldiers and their translator in a Kabul market. The Pentagon, however, has never alleged that he was associated with either the Taliban or al-Qaida. Now, Frakt said, the allegations against Jawad amount to “an alleged domestic crime under Afghanistan law. There is no basis for the U.S. military to detain him.”

While Amnesty International hailed the filing as “a strong symbolic gesture,” several human rights groups said it changes little.

“It appears on first reading that whatever they call those they claim the right to detain, they have adopted almost the same standard (as) the Bush administration … with one change, the addition of the word ‘substantially’ before the word ‘supported,’” the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a written statement. “This is really a case of old wine in new bottles.”

The American Civil Liberties Union also criticized Friday’s filing, calling it “a half-step in the right direction.”

“It is critical that the administration promptly narrow the category for individuals who can be held in military detention so that the U.S. truly comports with the laws of war and rejects the unlawful detention power of the past eight years,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a written statement.

That position was echoed by Seattle attorney Joe McMillan, who defended Osama bin Laden’s driver, Salim Hamdan, in federal and military courts.

Despite the absence of the term “enemy combatants” in Friday’s filing, “the position set forth by the Department of Justice is quite similar to the position adopted by the Bush administration,” McMillan said.

The Obama administration position, he said, “very much contemplates the existence of ‘enemy combatants’ and justifies detention at Guantanamo on that basis under the laws of war.”

Proponents of the continued detention of those held at Guantanamo found themselves on opposite sides of the dispute. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said he was “pleased that the Obama administration decided essentially to affirm the Bush administration’s definition of who can be detained.”

However, retired Navy Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, former commander of the USS Cole, which was attacked by al-Qaida, denounced the filing: “The president, in his search for justification to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, has now changed and lowered the standards for detaining terrorists; thereby setting the stage to justify their transfer and release.”

The Justice Department filing doesn’t give the prisoners a specific designation. They aren’t described as prisoners of war or enemy combatants, both categories of war prisoners under the Geneva Convention. The Bush administration created the term “unlawful enemy combatant” to remove detainees from the protections of international law.

A Justice Department official said Friday that, for now, they’re just considered “detainees.”

At the Pentagon, a spokesman for the Guantanamo war court declined to comment on whether the decision to abandon the term “enemy combatant” would spell an end to military commissions.

“As you know, there are a series of comprehensive interagency reviews of all policies and procedures related to detainees,” said commission spokesman Joe Dellavedova. “Until those reviews are complete, it would be inappropriate to comment.”

Still, Friday’s actions put a little more flesh on the bones of Obama’s approach to terrorism suspects, according to some legal experts.

“What’s important about it is it’s a plan on how they will evaluate Guantanamo detainees and future detainees,” said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale University. “It sets the bar higher than it had been set in the Bush administration.”

Obama in January signed an executive order to close Guantanamo within a year and ban the CIA from operating other detention facilities.

Friday’s filing seeks more time to unravel the enemy combatant policy that evolved in the Bush administration, and in the courts. Attorney General Eric Holder noted in a separate affidavit that he’s leading an effort to close the prison camps in Obama’s first year in office.

“The reviews addressing the disposition of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and the vital issue of detention policy are ongoing,” Holder wrote. “Important and difficult legal, diplomatic and national security issues are at stake.”