{"id":10690,"date":"2016-02-19T09:00:38","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T17:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/obama-to-raise-human-rights-during-historic-trip-to-cuba\/"},"modified":"2016-02-19T09:00:38","modified_gmt":"2016-02-19T17:00:38","slug":"obama-to-raise-human-rights-during-historic-trip-to-cuba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/obama-to-raise-human-rights-during-historic-trip-to-cuba\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama to raise human rights during historic trip to Cuba"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON<\/strong> \u2014 President Barack Obama said Thursday he\u2019ll raise human rights issues and other U.S. concerns with Cuban President Raul Castro during a history-making visit to the communist island nation.<\/p>\n

The brief visit in mid-March will mark a watershed moment in relations between the U.S. and Cuba, making Obama the first sitting U.S. president to set foot on the island in nearly seven decades. While in the country, Obama plans to meet with groups advocating for change in Cuba, a condition the president had laid out publicly for such a trip.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe still have differences with the Cuban government that I will raise directly,\u201d Obama wrote on Twitter announcing the visit. \u201cAmerica will always stand for human rights around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cuban Foreign Trade Minister Rodrigo Malmierca, on a visit to Washington, told The Associated Press that Obama\u2019s visit is good news for Cuba.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president will be welcomed,\u201d he said in Spanish.<\/p>\n

The U.S. was estranged from the communist nation for over half a century until Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro moved toward rapprochement more than a year ago. Since then, the nations have reopened embassies in Washington and Havana and have moved to restore commercial air travel, with a presidential visit seen as a key next step toward bridging the divide.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s ultimate aim is to persuade Congress to lift the trade embargo \u2014 Havana\u2019s biggest request of the U.S. Although short-term prospects have seemed unlikely, Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota said \u201cmomentum is growing\u201d and predicted legislation ending the embargo could pass Congress by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

While on the island, Obama will interact with members of Cuban \u201ccivil society,\u201d the White House said, referring to activists that advocate for various social causes. Prior to announcing the trip, Obama had said he\u2019d only travel to Cuba if he could speak to all kinds of groups \u2014 including those that oppose the Castro government.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, said the U.S. had seen progress from Cuba in releasing political prisoners, expanding Internet access hotspots and hosting an International Committee of the Red Cross meeting. But he said the U.S. still wasn\u2019t satisfied and pointed to outstanding issues including a rise in short-term detentions by Cuba\u2019s government.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe that not going and isolating Cuba doesn\u2019t serve to advance those issues,\u201d Rhodes said.<\/p>\n

First lady Michelle Obama planned to join Obama for his Havana swing, which will include a sit-down with Raul Castro but not with his brother, revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. From Cuba, Obama will travel to Argentina, where he\u2019ll meet with new President Mauricio Macri, the White House said.<\/p>\n

Word of his travel plans drew immediate resistance from opponents of warmer ties with Cuba \u2014 including Republican presidential candidates.<\/p>\n

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, whose father came to the U.S. from Cuba in the 1950s, said Obama shouldn\u2019t visit while the Castro family remains in power. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, another child of Cuban immigrants, lambasted the president for visiting what he called an \u201canti-American communist dictatorship.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably not going to invite me,\u201d Rubio said.<\/p>\n

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican born in Cuba, called the visit \u201cabsolutely shameful.\u201d But Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who traveled to Havana with Secretary of State John Kerry last year for the U.S. Embassy\u2019s re-opening, cheered the announcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Cubans accustomed to watching their government sputter down the last mile of socialism in a \u201857 Chevy, imagine what they\u2019ll think when they see Air Force One,\u201d Flake said.<\/p>\n

With less than a year left in office, Obama is eager to make rapid progress on restoring economic and diplomatic ties to cement warming relations with Cuba begun by his administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to make this policy change irreversible,\u201d Rhodes said, describing a strategy in which Obama would build up so much momentum that better relations would become inevitable.<\/p>\n

Officials didn\u2019t say what specific recent changes cleared the way for the trip. But on Tuesday, the two nations signed a deal restoring commercial air traffic as early as later this year, eliminating a key barrier to free travel between the countries. A day earlier, the U.S. approved the first U.S. factory in Cuba since Fidel Castro took power in 1959 and nationalized billions of dollars of U.S. property.<\/p>\n

The last sitting president to visit Havana was Calvin Coolidge in 1928. Harry Truman traveled in 1948 to the U.S.-controlled Guantanamo Bay and its naval base on the island\u2019s southeast end.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Kathleen Hennessey and Luis Alonso Lugo in Washington and Ben Fox in Miami contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

On Twitter, reach Josh Lederman at http:\/\/twitter.com\/joshledermanAP and Kevin Freking at https:\/\/twitter.com\/APkfreking<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 President Barack Obama said Thursday he\u2019ll raise human rights issues and other U.S. concerns with Cuban President Raul Castro during a history-making visit to the communist island nation. The brief visit in mid-March will mark a watershed moment in relations between the U.S. and Cuba, making Obama the first sitting U.S. president to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-10690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10690"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=10690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}