On the agenda for Obama’s visit are the following things: Watching a basketball match with Cuban counterpart Raul Castro, visiting an art museum, delivering a speech, touring Havana city, attending a State dinner and meeting clergymen.
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“In the absence of that, I think it will continue to be a very powerful irritant”.
President Barack Obama shared a stage with Cuba’s President Raul Castro at the Palace of the Revolution. His passion for liberty, freedom and self-determination lives on in the Cuban people today, ” Obama wrote in a guest book. Still, Obama heralded a “new day” in the US-Cuba relationship and said “part of normalizing relations means we discuss these differences directly”.
“It’s very significant to hear this from our president, for him to recognise that not all human rights are respected in Cuba”, Raul Rios, a 47-year-old driver, told the AP news agency.
Castro called on the United States to abandon the territory it occupies with a military base at Guantanamo Bay, on Cubas southwestern tip, and to remove the USA embargo against Cuba.
“He did say he was only going to take one question, I was going to take two, but I leave it up to you if you will address that question”, Obama said, adding: “I’m sure she’d appreciate just a short brief answer”.
“It’s their belief that they are not political prisoners, that they are in prison for various crimes and offenses against Cuban law”, Rhodes said.
Obama’s administration is seeking to bridge the ideological divide by galvanizing the support of the Cuban public to help him pressure their government for reforms that so far have been slow to come.
The president’s visit to Cuba, which wraps up on Tuesday, was not praised by everyone, with 2016 presidential candidates Sen.
The trip takes place barely 15 months after the announcements of December 17, 2014, when Castro and Obama announced the decision to restore diplomatic relations, broken off over five decades beforehand.
Few Americans thought they would live to see this day – an American president meeting with a communist president named Castro in Havana.
Throughout his presidency, Obama has sought to refocus US foreign policy on areas like Latin America that have received less attention than the turmoil in the Middle East and the terrorism emanating from the region.
But as important as those incremental steps are, the long-standing embargo must end, Castro said on March 21.
Obama wraps up his trip with a baseball game.
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“(Americans) believe that freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and freedom of religion are not just American values but are universal values”. “It’s, frankly, also important to Cuba’s future, because there’s a great resource in the Cuban American community”.
