Obama: No quick end to embargo on Cuba

WASHINGTON — Two days after reopening diplomatic relations with Cuba, President Barack Obama said Friday he doesn’t expect the effort to bring overnight change on the island, a quick end to the U.S. economic embargo or the likelihood that he will soon visit the commu- nist nation.

“This is still a regime that represses its people,” Obama said at a year-end news conference two days after the historic announcement that he was moving to end the half century of Cold War acrimony with Havana. He said he hopes to visit Cuba at some point in his life but that he is not at the stage yet of going or hosting Cuban President Raul Castro in Washington.

Instead, Obama said the change in policy should give the U.S. a greater opportunity to have influence on Cuba and reflects his belief that 50 years of isolation haven’t worked. He said the embargo should end but he didn’t anticipate it soon.

“We will be in a position to respond to whatever actions they take, the same way we do with a whole range of countries around the world when they do things we think are wrong,” Obama said. “There may be carrots as well as sticks that we can then apply.”

On another matter that the U.S. sees as foreign wrongdoing, Obama was asked about the recent hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment and the company’s decision not to send out a new movie that North Korea was angrily protesting.

Speaking shortly after the FBI said North Korea was behind the hack, Obama said he felt Sony “made a mistake” in shelving the satirical film about a plot to assassinate North Korea’s leader. He said the U.S. would respond to North Korea’s action “in a place and manner and time that we choose.”