U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuba’s Raul Castro sat down together on Saturday in the first formal meeting of the two country’s leaders in a half-century, pledging to reach for the kind of peaceful relationship that has eluded their nations for generations.
In a small conference room in a Panama City convention centre, the two sat side by side in a bid to inject fresh momentum into their months-old effort to restore diplomatic ties. Reflecting on the historic nature of the meeting, Mr. Obama said he felt it was time to try something new and to engage with both Cuba’s government and its people.
“What we have both concluded is that we can disagree with a spirit of respect and civility,” Mr. Obama said. “And over time, it is possible for us to turn the page and develop a new relationship between our two countries.”
Mr. Castro, for his part, said he agreed with everything Mr. Obama had said a stunning statement in and of itself for the Cuban leader. But he added the caveat that they had “agreed to disagee” at times. Mr. Castro said he had told the Americans that Cuba was willing to discuss issues such as human rights and freedom of the press, maintaining that “everything can be on the table.”
“We are disposed to talk about everything with patience,” Mr. Castro said in Spanish. “Some things we will agree with, and others we won’t.”
Not since 1958 have a U.S. and Cuban leader convened a substantial meeting; at the time, Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House and Fulgencio Batista in charge in Cuba. But relations quickly entered into a deep freeze amid the Cold War, and the U.S. spent decades trying to either isolate or actively overthrow the Cuban government.
In a stroke of coincidence, Eisenhower’s meeting with Batista in 1958 also took place in Panama, imbuing Saturday’s session between Mr. Obama and Mr. Castro with a sense of having come full circle.
The historic gathering played out on the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas, which this year included Cuba for the first time. Although the meeting wasn’t publicly announced in advance, White House aides had suggested the two leaders were looking for an opportunity to meet while in Panama and to discuss the ongoing efforts to open embassies in Havana and Washington, among other issues.
In his brief remarks to reporters at the start of their hour-long meeting, Mr. Obama acknowledged that Cuba, too, would continue raising concerns about U.S. policies earning a friendly smirk from Mr. Castro. “We are now in a position to move on a path toward the future, and leave behind some of the circumstances of the past that have made it so difficult for our countries to communicate,” Mr. Obama said.
Even still, raw passions were on vivid display earlier in the day when Mr. Castro, in a meandering, nearly hour-long speech to the summit, ran through an exhaustive history of perceived Cuban grievances against the U.S. dating back more than a century.
Then, in an abrupt about face, he apologised for letting his emotions get the best of him. He said many U.S. Presidents were at fault for that troubled history but that Mr. Obama isn’t one of them.
“I have told President Obama that I get very emotional talking about the revolution,” Mr. Castro said through a translator, noting that Mr. Obama wasn’t even born when the U.S. began sanctioning the island nation. “I apologize to him because President Obama had no responsibility for this.”
Mr. Obama agreed. “The Cold War has been over for a long time,” he said. “And I’m not interested in having battles frankly that started before I was born.”
The flurry of diplomacy kicked off on Wednesday when Mr. Obama and Mr. Castro spoke by phone only the second known call between U.S. and Cuban presidents in decades. It continued Friday evening when Mr. Obama and Mr. Castro traded handshakes and small talk at the summit’s opening ceremonies, setting social media abuzz with photos and cellphone video.
The goal of their presidential engagement- to inject fresh momentum into their delicate plan to restore normal relations between their countries. Mr. Obama and Mr. Castro sent shockwaves throughout the hemisphere in December when they announced the plan for rapprochement, and their envoys have spent the ensuing months working through thorny issues such as sanctions, the re-opening of embassies and the island nation’s place on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Although, earlier in the week, Mr. Obama suggested a decision to remove Cuba from the list was imminent, a senior Obama administration official who briefed reporters after the President’s meeting with Mr. Castro said Mr. Obama would not announce a decision on Saturday. The official was granted anonymity to discuss the President’s private meeting.
Removal from the terror list is a top priority for Mr. Castro because it would not only purge a stain on Cuba’s pride, but also ease its ability to conduct simple financial transactions. “Yes, we have conducted solidarity with other peoples that could be considered terrorism when we were cornered, when we were strongly harassed,” Mr. Castro conceded earlier on Saturday. “We had no other choice but to give up or to fight back.”
Yet Mr. Obama’s delay in delisting Cuba comes as the U.S. seeks concessions of its own namely, the easing of restrictions on American diplomats’ freedom of movement in Havana and better human rights protections. Mr. Obama met with Cuban dissidents on Friday at a civil society forum, and on Saturday, he said the U.S. would continue pressing Cuba on human rights even as he called for Congress to lift the economic embargo.
A successful detente would form a cornerstone of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy legacy. But it’s an endeavour he can’t undertake alone. Only Congress can fully lift the onerous U.S. sanctions regime on Cuba and there are deep pockets of opposition in the U.S. to taking that step.
As he sat down with the American President, Mr. Castro observed that nothing is truly static. Today’s profound disagreements could turn into areas of consensus tomorrow. “The pace of life at the present moment in the world,” he said, “it’s very fast.”
