HAVANA: President Barack Obama will hold rare talks with his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro on Monday in Havana, setting aside a more than half-century bitter standoff between the United States and the communist island.
The meeting in the Cuban capital’s Palace of the Revolution is only the third formal encounter between Obama and the brother of Fidel Castro, who handed over the presidency in 2008.
At stake is the historic shift to end the Cold War conflict, which has seen Washington try to bring Cuba to its knees through an economic embargo, while Havana, a close Soviet ally, became enemy territory.
Obama, who arrived Sunday with his family, is the first US president to touch down on the island, barely an hour’s flight from Florida, in 88 years.
As Air Force One landed in Havana, Obama cheerfully began the landmark trip by tweeting in local slang: “Que bola Cuba?” — or “What’s up?”
Later he noted that the last US president to come, Calvin Coolidge in 1928, needed three days to make the trip by train and navy ship.
“This is a historic visit,” he remarked to staff at the freshly reopened US embassy in Havana.
