“President Castro, you said in Panama that we might disagree on something today on which we would agree tomorrow”. Eventually he pushed back, saying if the journalist could offer up names of anyone allegedly imprisoned, they will be released before tonight ends.What political prisoners?
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Obama’s visit to Cuba is a crowning moment in his and Raul Castro’s bid to normalize ties between two countries that sit just 90 miles apart.
Because direct travel from the U.S.to Cuba is still heavily restricted, the process of booking our travel was an adventure itself.
Obama is under pressure from critics at home to push Castro’s Communist government to allow dissent from political opponents and further open its Soviet-style command economy.
The former mayor said health care and education in Cuba are on par with the United States.
Half of the Rhode Island Congressional delegation is with President Obama for this historic trip to Cuba.
Cuba has been criticized for briefly detaining demonstrators thousands of times a year but has drastically reduced its practice of handing down long prison sentences for crimes human rights groups consider to be political.
Obama also insisted he had not stopped tackling Castro over human rights.
As the two leaders milled around the stage, feeling their way to the exit, an effort by Castro to raise Obama’s arm in victory fell flat.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is also in Cuba for the visit.
“I’ve just met with representatives from the U.S Chamber of Commerce, and there are a lot of Miami business leaders here, so that gives me hope”, she said.
The White House said it had shared many such lists with the Cuban government before.
He also said that Cuban President Fidel Castro gave Obama “a very, very big slight” by not meeting him at the airport when Air Force One touched down in Havana on Sunday.
When NBC’s Andrea Mitchell asked, among other things, about their “dramatic arrests” during the Monday news conference, Castro did not answer directly, but instead responded with a question about “61 instruments” of human and civil rights.
It was unclear exactly which Cuban dissidents would attend Obama’s meeting at the U.S. Embassy, a matter of intense speculation and scrutiny ahead of the president’s trip.
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“The Cubans that I talk to down here want to preserve what’s best from their revolution, and they want to get rid of the worst of their revolution”, he said.
