The first family joined Cuban President Raul Castro at a baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team.
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Despite old differences, there remain many ties that bind the people of Cuba and the United States -including baseball and music. Ahead of the speech, young Cuban-Americans living in Miami said they would be watching closely for Obama to take a strong stand against the socialist leader.
Thousands of Cubans lined Mr Obama’s motorcade route to the theatre, some with video cameras. The president received a huge round of applause when he called for the Republican-led US Congress to lift the economic embargo on Cuba, calling it an “outdated burden on the Cuban people”.
During the game both presidents were seen participating in a wave with the rest of the spectators. However, the road to full normalisation of relations is dependent on a number of factors.
“Citizens should be free to speak their mind without fear, to organize and to criticize their government and to protest peacefully”, Obama said in the much-anticipated speech.
The coordinated attacks early Tuesday morning in Brussels left more than 34 people dead and dozens more injured after a string of blasts at an airport and near a metro station.
But the United States president’s optimistic speech also included criticism of Cuba’s human rights record.
“It’s always a challenge when you have a terrorist attack anywhere in the world, especially in this world of 24/7 news coverage”, he said.
JOHN YANG: Yesterday, the communist island’s state-run media ignored Cuban President Raul Castro’s tense exchange with American reporters on political prisoners.
“What they can do is scare and make people afraid and disrupt our daily lives and divide us, and as long as we don’t allow that to happen, we’re going to be okay”, Mr. Obama said.
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Obama’s address opened a whirlwind final day on the island that includes a meeting with Cuban dissidents and attendance at a baseball game featuring the country’s beloved national team – events made possible by the normalization of USA and Cuban relations 15 months ago.
