Though the White House has yet to say what the visit will entail, the trip has already been criticized by two GOP presidential candidates.
Advertisement
Cruz said he wouldn’t visit as president “as long as the Castros are in power”. The White House planned to unveil Obama’s travel plans later Thursday.
The U.S. embassy reopened in Cuba in 2015, which was closed in 1961.
After it was reported tonight that President Barack Obama is planning to visit Cuba next month, Sen.
Obama said in December that he would consider visiting Cuba as part of an opening to Havana that saw the two countries restore diplomatic ties and take steps toward expanded commercial relations.
Travel restrictions have been loosened and just last week, US airlines began to secure routes to the island after the nations signed an agreement to resume flights between Cuba and the United States.
President Obama’s real motivation for restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba is becoming more apparent. News, Obama himself said, “I am very much interested in going to Cuba, but I think the conditions have to be right”.
“The Cuban government is protecting them”, Rubio said, noting that the Raul Castro regime is protecting Joanne Chesimard, who was convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1977. Obama and other advocates have called for the embargo’s lifting in the past year.
The reports also came a day after the USA and Cuba signed a deal allowing regular passenger-plane service for the first time since the Communist revolution in the early 1960s.
Officials didn’t immediately specify what had changed in the last few weeks to clear the way for the trip, first reported by ABC News. Until now, only charter flights between the two countries have been permitted. The announcement followed more than a year of secret talks that involved Pope Francis and included securing the release by Cuba of a US government contractor, Alan Gross, who had been held for five years in Cuban prison.
Advertisement
The visit would mark a historic… Not since President Calvin Coolidge went to Havana in January 1928 has a sitting USA president been to that city.
