Obama, Castro Set for Historic Meet at Panama Summit
PANAMA CITY, Panama, April 11 (UPI) — For the first time in a half century, the United States’ chief executive will engage in substantial face-to-face discussions with Cuba’s leader on Saturday — a drought that stretches far back into the early days of the Cold War.President Barack Obama briefly exchanged words and a handshake with Cuban President Raul Castro late Friday in Panama City. Aides said nothing significant was discussed during the short encounter, but it foreshadowed Saturday’s momentous meeting.
The meet occurred at a time Obama is considering a recommendation from the U.S. State Department to remove the Caribbean communist island from a list of four nations deemed sponsors of terrorism. If Cuba, which was added to the list in 1982, is removed it will leave Iran, Syria and the Sudan as the only remaining nations officially considered by the U.S. government state sponsors of terrorism.
The White House announced in December that the U.S. government sought to reestablish diplomatic and economic relations with Cuba after decades of diminished or nonexistent cooperation and sometimes outright hostility.
“As the United States begins a new chapter in our relationship with Cuba, we hope it will create an environment that improves the lives of the Cuban people,” Obama said in Panama Friday.
Secretary of State John Kerry also met with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez late Thursday. This week’s communications are the highest level discussions between the two nations since Fidel Castro first assumed power in 1959.
The change of course happened after Havana abruptly released an American contractor imprisoned on the island for five years and a clandestine operative who remained in captivity for two decades.
The U.S. government, at the time, also released three Cubans suspected of spying after 15 years imprisoned.
Before he left Washington on Wednesday, Obama and Castro spoke in a telephone conversation — the second time they have done so since December’s developments.
Obama and Castro are in Panama to attend the Summit of the Americas, a regional gathering of leaders designed to allow North, Central and South American nations to meet and discuss politically worthy issues. This is the summit’s seventh meeting, and typically meets once every few years.
However, this year’s summit is the first attended by representative of Cuba, as the U.S. government actively blocked the nation’s participation in each of the previous six meetings between 1994 and 2012 — and for a special session in 2004. The summit, which rotates host nations, will meet again in 2018 in Suriname. Miami hosted the first summit 21 years ago.
A reestablishment of relations would ultimately lead to the reopening of a U.S. embassy in Havana. The former embassy building, which ceased operations as a U.S. mission facility in January 1961, is currently being operated by the government of Switzerland as a representative of U.S. Cuban interests.
A few months before President John F. Kennedy severed relations with Cuba in 1961, the U.S. government imposed an embargo to forbid American businesses from trading in any fashion with Cuba — which has resulted in crippling economic difficulties for the Caribbean nation. A resumption of ties would likely remove at least certain provisions of the embargo.
Following a six-year insurgent campaign by former president Fidel Castro — known as the Cuban Revolution that deposed president Fulgencio Batista — Havana’s government became socialist on New Year’s Day 1959 and turned communist six years later. The nation’s alignment with the Soviet Union subsequently sparked a number of tense confrontations with the United States — including the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.
