Obama Set to Engage Cubans in Panama

Luis Ramirez

April 09, 2015 10:08 PM

PANAMA CITY—

President Barack Obama has arrived in Panama for a summit at which he is expected to have a historic encounter with Cuban leader Raul Castro.

President Obama arrived in the Panamanian capital Thursday night for the Summit of the Americas, which will for the first time include communist Cuba.

There is no formal meeting planned, but White House officials said President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro will interact.

Secretary of State John Kerry met with his Cuban counterpart, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, on the eve of the regional summit, in what is the highest-level meeting in decades between the two governments.

A senior State Department official said that meeting was "very constructive," adding both sides "agreed they made progress."

The official did not clarify what progress had been made, but did stress that both sides would "continue to work to resolve outstanding issues."

Earlier in Jamaica, Obama stopped short of announcing a U.S. government decision to take Cuba off Washington's list of state sponsors of terrorism.

“As you know, there’s a process involved in reviewing whether or not a country should be on the State Sponsor of Terrorism list. That review has been completed at the State Department. It is now forwarded to the White House," Obama said.

But the U.S. leader said a process still needs to happen, and he said he would not be making a formal announcement just yet.

“The one thing I will say is that throughout this process, our emphasis has been on the facts. So we want to make sure that given that this is a powerful tool to isolate those countries that genuinely do support terrorism, that when we make those designations we’ve got strong evidence that, in fact, that’s the case," he said.

Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Senate's Foreign Relations panel, confirmed the agency has recommended removing Cuba from the list. "The United States has a unique opportunity to begin a fresh chapter with Cuba,'' he said.

President Obama has long signaled he is willing to remove the island nation from the list as part of the normalization in diplomatic relations between the two countries he announced late last year after a five-decade split. Three other countries are on the U.S. list, accused of repeatedly supporting global terrorism: Syria, Iran and Sudan.

President Obama’s overtures to Cuban leaders come amid lingering questions about Cuba’s record on human rights. Obama arrived in Panama against a backdrop of questions about Cuba and human rights - as well as protests.

Pro-Castro activists on Wednesday confronted Cuban dissidents outside the Cuban embassy in Panama City, shoving, kicking and insulting the dissidents who said at least some of the attackers had emerged from inside the embassy.

The two-day summit of leaders of North and South America begins Friday.