A ‘Cuba’ sugar from O to Raul
Meet is sweet after feudin’ with Putin
WASHINGTON — A day after clashing with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the UN, President Obama was all smiles as he sat down with Cuba’s Raul Castro — even as the two leaders remained at odds over some contentious issues.
The oneonone meeting is the latest development in a thaw that began when the two nations announced the restoration of diplomatic relations last December.
It was also the first meeting between a US and Cuban president on US soil for 60 years — and the first trip by a Cuban president to the UN since Castro’s brother, Fidel, came in 2000.
Before the sitdown, the two men stood and smiled as they shook hands in a photoop lasting nearly a minute — about three times longer than Obama’s handshake session Monday with Putin.
Castro even joked that Obama was so much taller than him.
But the continuing trade embargo imposed by the US quickly emerged as a key issue.
Obama said in a speech to the UN General Assembly on Monday that Congress would eventually lift the embargo.
Castro told the UN on Tuesday he wants an end to the “blockade” now and is also pressing the US to give back the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which the US says it won’t do.
Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, later called on Obama to use executive authority to start undoing the embargo.
The president’s actions at the UN “have a very limited value, a very limited scope, and do not deal with any significant aspects when it comes to the implementation of the blockade against Cuba,” Rodriguez said.
Only Congress can remove the embargo, and many Republican lawmakers, as well as some Democrats, say they’re not ready to do so until Cuba makes significant political changes.
But Rodriguez insisted, “The executive power of a US president is very broad.”
At his meeting with Castro, Obama “reaff irmed our commitment to see the Cuban government do a better job of not just respecting, but proactively protecting, the basic human rights of the Cuban people,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.
Meanwhile, Obama also con vened a panel at the UN on countering terrorism and ISIS in particular, where he described the endeavor as a “longterm campaign — not only against this particular network, but against its ideology.”
“Even if we were to wipe out the entire cadre of [ISIS] lead ership, we would still have some of these forces at work,” Obama said.
Secretary of State John Kerry planned to meet Wednesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to follow up on Obama’s tense sitdown with Putin.