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Cuban President Raul Castro greeted President Obama with full honors in Havana. It's the first time in almost 90 years a sitting U.S. president has visited Cuba. VPC
Cuban President Raul Castro and President Obama, March 21, 2016.(Photo: MICHAEL REYNOLDS, EPA)
HAVANA<span style="color: Red;">*</span>— President Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro met<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Monday as part of Obama's historic visit to the Cuban capital marking the revitalized relations between the two countries.
It was their<span style="color: Red;">*</span>third face-to-face encounter since the two countries began to normalize relations 15 months ago, but it was the first on Castro's home turf and the first visit of a U.S. president to the island in 88 years.
Obama and Castro first reviewed on honor guard<span style="color: Red;">*</span>at the Palace of the Revolution and listened to the national anthems of both countries. They are scheduled to have<span style="color: Red;">*</span>two back-to-back meetings, the most extensive high-level talks between the United States<span style="color: Red;">*</span>and Cuba in decades.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>The first is one-on-one, with only translators, security and perhaps a close aide in the room. Afterward, the meeting will be expanded to include top diplomats in both delegations.
On the agenda are two major issues, which Obama sees as related: Economic liberalization that would allow U.S. investment and entrepreneurship on the communist island, and a change in Cuba's human rights record to allow democratic reforms and basic freedoms for the Cuban people.
"There have been some baby steps taken when it comes to the economy and the release of dissidents. More has to happen on the Cuban side," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who's accompanying Obama on his trip to Cuba.
Obama needs Cuba to commit to more reforms in order to make more progress on the domestic front, where bipartisan congressional action will be needed for<span style="color: Red;">*</span>the United States to<span style="color: Red;">*</span>lift the embargo and allow unrestricted investment in the Cuban economy.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>"If we don't end the embargo soon, five million American tourists are going to be coming to Cuba, but they're going to be staying in Spanish hotels and eating Chinese food."
The day's biggest wild card may be what happens after the Obama-Castro meeting. Obama is accustomed to conducting a news conference after a meeting with a foreign head of state. Castro is not.
So the official schedule says<span style="color: Red;">*</span>each president will make only<span style="color: Red;">*</span>a "statement to the press" following their meeting. But<span style="color: Red;">*</span>White House officials say they have continued to press Castro to allow U.S. and Cuban journalists to ask both presidents questions.
Obama and Castro have met twice before: first at the Pan-American summit in Panama and again at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. There have been no plans announced for Castro to visit Washington.
Obama begins the day with a wreath laying at a memorial to Jose Marti, the turn-of-the-century Cuban nationalist leader considered a unifying figure in Cuban history.
"It is a great honor to pay tribute to Jose Marti, who gave his life for independence of his homeland," Obama wrote in the guest book at the Marti memorial."His passion for liberty, freedom, and self-determination lives on in the Cuban people today."
Monday afternoon, he'll participate in an entrepreneurship summit hosted by broadcast journalist Soledad O’Brien. The Obama administration wants to boost the emerging cuentapropistas who are increasingly making a living independent of government-owned enterprises.
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