President Barack Obama will pay an historic visit to Cuba in the coming weeks, senior Obama administration officials said Wednesday, becoming the first president to set foot on the island in almost nine decades.
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In Dec. 2014 the president had said he’d go to Cuba if “I with confidence can say that we’re seeing some progress in the liberty and freedom and possibilities of ordinary Cubans, I’d love to use a visit as a way of highlighting that progress”, he told Yahoo News.
CNN said the trip was to be formally announced Thursday, citing one source as saying the anticipated visit to the communist-ruled island would be short.
Leading up to the announcement of Obama’s trip, White House officials said Cuba would need to demonstrate human rights reforms before the President would travel there.
Following secret negotiations between their governments, Mr Obama and Mr Castro announced in late 2014 they would begin normalising ties, and months later held the first face-to-face meeting between an American and Cuban president since 1958.
Thereafter the two countries have moved ahead to restore diplomatic ties after decades and the USA lifted sanctions on Cuba. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, another child of Cuban immigrants, lambasted the president for visiting what he called an “anti-American communist dictatorship”.
Cruz said Obama shouldn’t make the trip “as long as the Castros are in power”.
Mr. Cruz, whose father is Cuban, said “my family has seen first-hand the evil and oppression in Cuba”.
A USA official, asked about the prospects for a March visit by Obama, declined to discuss the timing for such a trip. Now, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest says the president “regrets” that approach.
On Tuesday, the United States and Cuba signed an agreement authorizing daily U.S. commercial flights to the island for the first time in more than 50 years.
Last summer, both countries reopened embassies in each nation and Obama later cleared the way for resumption of commercial flights between the United States and the Caribbean island.
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Not since President Calvin Coolidge went to Havana in January 1928 has a sitting US president been to Havana, according to the State Department historian’s office. Jimmy Carter traveled to Cuba in 2002 at the invitation of Castro, but it was 20 years after he had left office.
