Castro and Obama meet in New York (Video)
Presidents Raul Castro and Barack Obama met on Tuesday (Sept. 29) on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. It is the first meeting on U.S. soil between a Cuban and U.S. president in 60 years, reported ABC News. And the last Cuban president to do so was not Fidel Castro.
Obama and Raul Castro first met in April at the Summit of the Americas in Panama – the first bilateral meeting between each country’s president since the revolution. They have also spoken on the phone three times, the first following the Dec. 17 announcement to restore diplomatic ties between the two countries.
Both presidents brought along high-power retinues (as seen in video below). Obama was accompanied by Secretary of State John Kerry; National Security Council chief Susan Rice; Benjamin Rhodes, Rice’s deputy; Mark Feierstein, the NSC’s director of Hemispheric Affairs; and Samantha Power, chief U.S. delegate to the United Nations.
Castro was joined by Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez; Alejandro Castro Espín, National Security Commission chief; Juan Francisco Arias Fernández, Castro Espín’s deputy; Josefina Vidal, head of U.S. Affairs at the Foreign Ministry; and José Ramón Cabañas, Cuba’s ambassador to the U.S.
“The meeting between Castro and Obama sustains the momentum of the historic rapprochement they are pursuing,” Peter Kornbluh, author of “Back Channel to Cuba,” told ABC News. “With two meetings and three phone conversations in the last nine months, they are actually building a relationship that will benefit their respective nations.”
Fidel Castro did visit the U.S. four months after the Cuban revolution in 1959, but then President Eisenhower shunned the Cuban leader. Vice President Richard Nixon met with Castro on that occasion.
Fidel has spoken a number of times at the UN General Assembly. The first time, in 1960, speaking for 4.5 hours, a record he still holds. His last UN speech was delivered in 2000.
The U.N. General Assembly is expected to vote for the 24th time to condemn the U.S. embargo against Cuba. Of the 193-nation assembly, last year 188 countries voted for the nonbinding resolution, with only the United States and Israel voting against it. There is speculation that both the U.S. and Israel may abstain from voting this year – making it a clean sweep.
