Washington, Jun 19 (EFE).- The United States and Cuba on July 17 will resume their dialogue on immigration, talks that have been stalled for more than two years, in the second attempt to explore establishing closer links after the bilateral conversations on the resumption of direct mail service between the two countries that concluded Wednesday in this capital. The prior round of bilateral immigration dialogue ended in Havana in January 2011. "The scheduled conversations do not represent a significant change in U.S. policy toward Cuba," a State Department source told Efe.

The widow and daughter of late Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya, who are visiting relatives in Miami, said on Tuesday that they plan to seek asylum in the United States. "We are political refugees, because we are politically persecuted in Cuba," said Ofelia Acevedo, whose deceased husband founded the Christian Liberation Movement dissident group. "We did not come here seeking political asylum, but we are, quite simply, refugees who have found ourselves in this country," she told a press conference at a Miami church.

President Xi Jinping is to launch a "thorough clean-up" of the ruling Communist Party, state media reported Tuesday, the latest strongly-worded anti-corruption drive to be enacted by China's new leader. The "upcoming year-long campaign" will target what the Xinhua news agency described as "undesirable work styles such as formalism, bureaucratism, laxity and extravagance". A broader, high-profile campaign against government waste and corruption was launched after Xi and others took over the party in November.

Officials from the United States and Cuba will meet this week to restore direct mail services frozen since 1963, the State Department said Monday. "Representatives from the Department of State and the United States Postal Service will meet with representatives from the government of Cuba for a technical discussion on re-establishing direct transportation of mail," spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.