HAVANA — American hopes of opening an embassy in Havana before Presidents Obama and Raul Castro meet at a regional summit this week have been snarled by a dispute about Cuba’s presence on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, officials said.
Another obstacle is whether American diplomats will be free to travel and talk to ordinary Cubans without restriction, the officials said.
The Summit of the Americas will be the scene of the presidents’ first face-to-face meeting since they announced Dec. 17 that they would reestablish diplomatic relations after a half-century of hostility.
The Obama administration wanted the embassies reopened before the summit starts in Panama City on Friday, boosting a new US policy motivated partly by a sense that isolating Cuba was causing friction with other countries in the region.
Arriving at the summit with a deal to reopen embassies in Washington and Havana would create good will for the United States, particularly after it issued new sanctions on selected Venezuelan officials last month that prompted protests from left-leaning countries around the hemisphere.
Negotiators on both sides said they are confident they will be able to strike a deal to reopen the embassies, but not necessarily before the summit.
‘‘It’s not a lot of time, let’s put it that way,’’ State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told a briefing last week when asked whether the agreement was likely to be reached before the gathering on Friday.
Asked Monday about the latest on the embassies, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters that ‘‘when you have a country that has essentially been ostracized by the United States for five decades . . . it’s going to take a little bit of time to reestablish some trust.
‘‘When you consider the 50-year history between our two countries, three months doesn’t seem very long,’’ he said, referring to December’s statement.
Deputy National Security Adviser Benjamin Rhodes said the State Department’s review of Cuba’s place on the terrorism list is in ‘‘its final stages.’’ While he said the timing is in the hands of Secretary of State John F. Kerry, he would not rule out an Obama announcement during the summit.
The United States and Cuba have held three rounds of talks about restoring diplomatic relations. Cuba’s main demand is to be removed from the terrorism-sponsor list, a Cold War-era designation that isolates it from much of the world financial system because banks fear repercussions from doing business with designated countries.
Even Cuba’s Interests Section in Washington has lost its bank in the United States, forcing it to deal in cash.
Washington has long since stopped accusing Havana of supporting terrorism, and Obama made clear in December that he intends to remove Cuba from the list.
But US officials said the president must first send Congress a report that says Cuba has not provided any support for international terrorism during the previous six months, and that it has assured the United States that it will not support terrorism in the future.
The list is a particularly charged issue for Cuba because of the United States’ history of supporting exile groups responsible for attacks on the island, including the 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger flight from Barbados that killed 73 people.
Officials familiar with the negotiations said the demand for assurances that there will be no future terror support has led Cuba to reiterate its own past allegations about US involvement in terrorism against the island, and issue a reciprocal demand that the United States pledge to not support such attacks in the future.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity.