Obama, Castro hail 'new day' for US-Cuba relations
HAVANA: Barack Obama and his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro vowed Monday in Havana to set aside their differences in pursuit of what the US president called a “new day” for the relationship between the neighbors.
Castro acknowledged there were still “profound” differences over human rights and the decades-old US economic embargo. He pointedly refused to acknowledge that Cuba holds political prisoners.
But Castro said the former enemies should take inspiration from US endurance swimmer Diana Nyad, who in 2013 managed on her fifth attempt to become the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage.
“If she can do it, we can do it too,” Castro told journalists after more than two hours of talks with Obama in Havana's Palace of the Revolution, the nerve center of the communist government that has ruled Cuba since the takeover by Raul's brother Fidel Castro in 1959.