Cuba will host the most senior US official to visit the island in 35 years on Wednesday for two days of groundbreaking talks to shed their Cold War-era rivalry.
The meetings in Havana follow the historic decision by US President Barack Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro in December to seek normal diplomatic relations.
"In Cuba, we are ending a policy that was long past its expiration date," Obama said in his annual State of the Union speech late Tuesday, urging the US Congress to lift the decades-old embargo.
"When what you have done doesn't work for fifty years. It's time to try something new," he said.
Roberta Jacobson, the US assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, will be the highest-ranking American official to visit the communist island since 1980 when she lands Wednesday.
Cuba will be represented by Josefina Vidal, director of the foreign ministry's US affairs, for the two days of talks.
"We hope to establish civilized relations between countries that have different political concepts, but which can get along while respecting these differences," an unnamed Cuban foreign ministry official told pro-government website cubadebate.cu.
The first day of talks in Havana's Convention Center will focus on migration, an issue for both nations as Cuba has seen an exodus of Cubans to nearby Florida over the years.
Jacobson's deputy, Edward Alex Lee, will lead those talks.
The Cuban official said Havana will express its concerns about a US policy that gives Cubans quick access to permanent residency when they set foot on US soil.
But a senior US official said there were "no plans to change US policy," which must be modified by Congress.
Jacobson will participate in Thursday's negotiations on reopening embassies, which closed after relations were severed in 1961.
The US side wants Cuba to reaccredit its diplomats, lift travel restrictions for them within the island, ease shipments to the US mission and lift a cap on personnel.
While US and Cuban officials prepared to meet, a Russian spy ship docked in Havana in a less than stealthy visit that had not been previously announced.
Ordinary Cubans hope the rapprochement will improve their lives in a country where supermarket shelves often lack basic goods and people make $20 per month on average.
"Things could change for the better, giving us a little more than what we normally have in the material and spiritual sense," said Dayron Herrera, 27, an artist who was drawing Old Havana while sitting on a street near the capital's Cathedral.
The island's dissident community has had a mixed reaction, thanking Obama for his attempt to improve their country while voicing concern that too much was conceded to the Castro regime without getting much in return.
In the US Congress, some lawmakers have criticized Obama's decision, with Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American, saying it was "enriching a tyrant and his regime."
The two countries have already taken steps to thaw their once glacial relations.
The Cuban government completed this month the release of 53 political prisoners demanded by Washington, but critics say Obama has not done enough to push Havana on human rights.
Days later, the US Treasury Department eased travel and trade restrictions, though the US Congress has final word on lifting the embargo, which prevents US tourism.