“Cuba’s destiny will not be decided by the United States or any other nation”, he vowed. Much of the focus from Obama was on finding a way to give the Cuban people greater freedom.
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Obama, who talked with Cuban President Raúl Castro in Havana on Monday, was expected to meet with members of Cuba’s civil society after his speech Tuesday.
Mr Castro was asked by an American reporter whether he favoured the election of Republican front-runner Donald Trump or likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
In a historic, nationally-televised speech to the Cuban people, Obama began by addressing Tuesday’s terror attacks in Brussels, which have claimed the lives of 34 people and injured almost 200 more.
Monday, Castro became visibly agitated when American journalists asked him if he would release political prisoners.
After responding to a handful of questions, Castro ended the news conference abruptly, declaring, “I think this is enough”.
US President Barack Obama in Havana, Cuba. His government insists that there are no political prisoners, and that those held – estimated by human rights groups to be around 80 people – are spies, terrorists or armed insurrectionists. He suggested that shortcomings in US health care and education were tantamount to human rights abuses.
Bradwil believes the rumor that tourists must see Cuba before it changes is a myth the Cuban government wants to exploit.
After landing on the island yesterday, President Obama did a joint news conference with President Raul Castro.
Castro called on the U.S.to abandon the military base at Guantanamo Bay, on Cuba’s southwestern tip.
Obama, under pressure back home to show that his scrapping of more than half a century of U.S. hostility to the Castro regime is paying off, then sat for discussions against a backdrop of tall tropical plants and the two countries’ flags.
Sen. Ted Cruz, another of the party’s presidential hopefuls and the son of a Cuban immigrant, also commented on Obama’s trip, calling it a “sad day in American history”.
Obama was welcomed by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, accompanied by Josefina Vidal, head of the US Department at the Cuban Foreign Ministry, and Jose Ramon Cabañas, Cuban ambassador to Washington. “What is most important is that we have started taking the first steps to build a new type of relationship, one that has never existed between Cuba and the United States”. “After this meeting is over, you can give me a list of political prisoners, and if we have those political prisoners, they will be released before tonight ends”.
“Watching the president and his advisers looking out the window as we landed, and the excitement of that”, Flake said.
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Obama signed a book to remember a pre-Castro revolutionary.
