Raúl Castro visit to US looms

Cuba’s President Raul Castro. AP FILE PHOTO

WASHINGTON—A US visit by Cuban President Raúl Castro is a possibility, the White House said on Thursday, a day after he and President Barack Obama announced a historic bilateral rapprochement.

Obama has only two years left in office. Fidel Castro, who has had a colossal presence in Cuba for half a century but was conspicuously absent from the detente sealed by his brother, is 88 and ailing, while brother Raúl is 83.

With their window for action closing, both sides were under pressure to make a gesture.

Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson revealed she will travel to Havana in late January for the first direct talks to “begin the process of restoration of diplomatic relations.”

But amid celebrations on Havana’s streets and plaudits ringing out from China to Chile over the prospects of burying a final vestige of the Cold War, American lawmakers smothered prospects of any rapid rollback of the trade embargo at the heart of the dispute.

Unthinkable possibility

Obama, who said Washington would move to “end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests,” on Wednesday raised the previously unthinkable possibility of his visiting the island.

When reporters on Thursday broached the subject of a Castro visit to the United States, White House spokesperson Josh Earnest said: “I wouldn’t rule out a visit from President Castro.”

Earnest cited Obama’s trips to China and Burma (Myanmar), and the visits by those nations’ leaders to Washington, to argue that engaging with such figures “can actually serve as a useful way to shine a spotlight on the shortcomings of other country’s records as it relates to human rights.”

Beijing meanwhile said it hoped the United States would lift its embargo on Cuba as quickly as possible. AFP