U.S. President Barack Obama this week reset Washington's Cold War-era policy on Cuba and the two countries swapped prisoners in a historic deal after 18 months of secret talks.

Cubans have treated the end of open U.S. hostility as a triumph, especially the release of three Cuban intelligence agents who served long U.S. prison terms for spying on Cuban exile groups in Florida.

U.S. officials will visit Havana in January to start talks on normalizing relations and Obama has said his government will push Cuba on issues of human and political rights as they negotiate over the coming months.

Castro said he is open to discussing a wide range of issues but that they should also cover the United States and he insisted Cuba would not give up its socialist principles.

"In the same way that we have never demanded that the United States change its political system, we will demand respect for ours," Castro told the National Assembly.

He again praised Obama for the policy change in a speech that became a partly defiant, partly celebratory show of pride for resisting five decades of U.S. aggression.