Obama, Castro poised for landmark talks in Panama
12 April 2015 5:47 AM IST
Hours after shaking hands, US President Barack Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro head into historic talks in Panama on Saturday in their efforts to bury decades of animosity.
Taking their bid to restore diplomatic ties to a new level, Obama and Castro will have a discussion on the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas in Panama City, according to US officials.
The two leaders already said hello late on Friday, greeting each other and shaking hands, a gesture rich in symbolism, as UN chief Ban Ki-moon and other leaders looked on, before the 35-nation summit’s inauguration.
They shook hands only once before, at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service in 2013.
The face-to-face talks will be the climax of their surprise announcement on December 17 that, after 18 months of secret negotiations, they would seek to normalise relations between the United States and Cuba that broke off in 1961. The last time US and Cuban leaders met was in 1956, three years before Fidel Castro came to power.
“We’re in new territory here,” said senior Obama advisor Ben Rhodes, referring to the flurry of diplomacy that included Thursday the first meeting between US and Cuban foreign ministers since 1958. “This is not just about two leaders sitting down together,” he said, citing Obama’s decision to ease trade and travel restrictions with communist Cuba. “It’s about fundamentally changing how the United States engages Cuba, its government, its people, its civil society.”
The format of the meeting has yet to be confirmed, but Rhodes said the two leaders would likely talk about the negotiations to restore diplomatic ties as well as lingering disagreements.
“As we move toward the process of normalisation, we’ll have our differences, government to government, with Cuba on many issues. There’s nothing wrong with that,” Obama told a regional civil society forum on Friday.
Cuba has demanded to be removed from a US list of state sponsors of terrorism before embassies can reopen, noting that this has blocked the country’s access to bank credit. The White House indicated that Obama was not yet ready to decide whether to remove Havana from the blacklist, but that it could not rule out an announcement in Panama.
Obama meets Cuban dissidents ahead of Castro meeting
US president Barack Obama met two Cuban dissidents, ahead of a historic meeting with the communist regime’s leader, Raul Castro. Obama held a closed-door meeting on Friday with prominent critics of Castro’s regime, as well as a dozen other dissidents from the Americas, in a move sure to provoke ire in Havana. Obama, flanked by the leaders of Costa Rica and Uruguay, met lawyer Laritza Diversent and political activist Manuel Cuesta Moura. The gathering took place on the sidelines of a civil society meeting linked to the Summit of the Americas in Panama. Before the closed-door meeting, Obama told rights activists from across the region that “(we) stand by you every step of the way.”
“When we speak out on behalf of somebody who has been imprisoned for no other reason than because they spoke truth to power, when we are helping an organization that is trying to empower a minority inside a country get more access to resources, we’re not doing that because it serves our own interests.
Taking their bid to restore diplomatic ties to a new level, Obama and Castro will have a discussion on the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas in Panama City, according to US officials.
The two leaders already said hello late on Friday, greeting each other and shaking hands, a gesture rich in symbolism, as UN chief Ban Ki-moon and other leaders looked on, before the 35-nation summit’s inauguration.
They shook hands only once before, at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service in 2013.
The face-to-face talks will be the climax of their surprise announcement on December 17 that, after 18 months of secret negotiations, they would seek to normalise relations between the United States and Cuba that broke off in 1961. The last time US and Cuban leaders met was in 1956, three years before Fidel Castro came to power.
“We’re in new territory here,” said senior Obama advisor Ben Rhodes, referring to the flurry of diplomacy that included Thursday the first meeting between US and Cuban foreign ministers since 1958. “This is not just about two leaders sitting down together,” he said, citing Obama’s decision to ease trade and travel restrictions with communist Cuba. “It’s about fundamentally changing how the United States engages Cuba, its government, its people, its civil society.”
The format of the meeting has yet to be confirmed, but Rhodes said the two leaders would likely talk about the negotiations to restore diplomatic ties as well as lingering disagreements.
“As we move toward the process of normalisation, we’ll have our differences, government to government, with Cuba on many issues. There’s nothing wrong with that,” Obama told a regional civil society forum on Friday.
Cuba has demanded to be removed from a US list of state sponsors of terrorism before embassies can reopen, noting that this has blocked the country’s access to bank credit. The White House indicated that Obama was not yet ready to decide whether to remove Havana from the blacklist, but that it could not rule out an announcement in Panama.
Obama meets Cuban dissidents ahead of Castro meeting
US president Barack Obama met two Cuban dissidents, ahead of a historic meeting with the communist regime’s leader, Raul Castro. Obama held a closed-door meeting on Friday with prominent critics of Castro’s regime, as well as a dozen other dissidents from the Americas, in a move sure to provoke ire in Havana. Obama, flanked by the leaders of Costa Rica and Uruguay, met lawyer Laritza Diversent and political activist Manuel Cuesta Moura. The gathering took place on the sidelines of a civil society meeting linked to the Summit of the Americas in Panama. Before the closed-door meeting, Obama told rights activists from across the region that “(we) stand by you every step of the way.”
“When we speak out on behalf of somebody who has been imprisoned for no other reason than because they spoke truth to power, when we are helping an organization that is trying to empower a minority inside a country get more access to resources, we’re not doing that because it serves our own interests.
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