PANAMA CITY -- President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro plan their first substantial, in-person discussion today as they work to restore diplomatic ties after more than half a century of estrangement between their countries.
Details of their meeting were still being worked out Friday, Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser, said. The two leaders spoke by phone Wednesday for only the second time, ahead of their arrival in Panama City minutes apart Thursday evening for the Summit of the Americas.
This is the first time Cuba is participating in a Summit of the Americas, a gathering held every three years. Cuba's inclusion came as a result of pressure from the rest of Latin America and the decision by Obama and Castro to normalize relations after more than 50 years of enmity.
"Cuba's participation does signal a new chapter," Rhodes said.
On Friday night, Obama and Castro met briefly, shook hands and exchanged a few words in an unscheduled encounter before a formal dinner that started the summit.
Obama and Castro previously exchanged a brief handshake in 2013 during Nelson Mandela's funeral in South Africa but haven't held any substantive in-person meetings. They also planned to be among the leaders attending opening events of the summit Friday evening at Panama Viejo, home to archaeological ruins dating to the 1500s.
Rhodes said their meeting would come on the summit's second and final day.
"We don't have a formal meeting scheduled at a certain time, but we anticipate they will have a discussion tomorrow," Rhodes said Friday.
Obama and Castro, the brother of longtime former Cuban President Fidel Castro, first spoke in a December phone call as they announced their intent to restore diplomatic relations between their countries.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez preceded the presidential meeting with a private discussion in Panama City that the State Department described as lengthy and productive. The Cuban government said the nearly three-hour talks were "respectful and constructive."
The U.S. and Cuba are trying to start their relationship anew after five decades of American presidents either isolating or working to overthrow Fidel Castro's government. Obama is preparing to announce whether he will remove Cuba from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, a major impediment to warmer ties as far as Havana is concerned.
The U.S. has long since stopped actively accusing Cuba of supporting terrorism, and Obama has hinted at his willingness to take Cuba off the list since he and Castro announced a thaw in relations in December.
"We don't want to be imprisoned by the past," Obama said Thursday in Jamaica, the first stop on his trip. "When something doesn't work for 50 years, you don't just keep on doing it. You try something new."
Under three laws, designation by the secretary of state as a backer of international terrorism can lead to sanctions including restrictions on U.S. aid, a ban on defense exports and sales, controls over the export of items that have both civilian and potential military use, and financial and other restrictions.
Cuba was placed on the terrorism list in 1982 for providing safe haven to members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and of the Basque Fatherland and Liberty group popularly known as ETA.
According to the State Department's April 2014 Country Report on Terrorism, Cuba's ties to ETA have become more distant, with Havana relocating about eight of the two dozen ETA members in Cuba with Spain's cooperation.
Cuba also made efforts throughout 2014 to host and broker peace talks between the FARC and Colombia, working with Norway, Colombia, Venezuela and the Red Cross to facilitate the travel of FARC members to Cuba to take part in negotiations.
The State Department has recommended that Obama remove Cuba from the terror list, according to an aide on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak ahead of a formal announcement.
'Civil society' meeting
In addition to the terror list, the process of normalizing ties between the two countries has brought to the surface other difficult issues that have long fed in to the U.S.-Cuban estrangement.
Hopes of reopening embassies in Havana and Washington before the summit failed to materialize. The U.S. is still pushing Cuba to allow more freedom of movement for its diplomats, while Cuba wants relief from a sanctions regime that only Congress can fully lift.
Also, in a nod to lingering U.S. concerns about human rights and political freedoms, Obama planned to attend a forum bringing together both dissidents and members of the Cuban political establishment while in Panama.
But Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, criticized Cuban pro-government activists after they scuffled with Cuban dissidents this week during the parallel summit for "civil society."
Rhodes said such action was "grossly inconsistent with the spirit of dialogue" of the summit and threatened to overshadow the spirit of goodwill that should mark the event.
Cuban adversaries came to blows over one another's presence in the parallel meetings, which were dealing with democracy, human rights and other social issues.
At odds are an official delegation of Cuban "civil society," or nongovernmental groups -- although most seem to be from the Communist Party -- and a collection of dissidents from Cuba and abroad who oppose the Castro government.
On Wednesday, the first day of the parallel summit, members of the official delegation complained that they had not all received the credentials necessary to enter the meeting. They protested outside the hotel where the meeting was to take place, blocked the entrances and then started accusing the dissident group of being "mercenaries" and "murderers" on the payroll of the U.S. government.
At one point, the two groups began to scuffle, with fists thrown and police called. Twelve people were arrested.
On Thursday, members of the official delegation attending the meetings attempted to derail conversation to support issues important to the Cuban government, participants said.
"We are tired of the ... Cubans," said Sofia Montenegro, a Nicaraguan activist who was also participating. "They want to sabotage everything."
Eventually, she said, participants sneaked away from the conference rooms, leaving the Cubans behind. Only then, she said, could they agree on various points on the agenda, including the demand that the Organization of American States, a sponsor of the summit, create a mechanism for monitoring democratic progress in Latin American nations.
"We didn't tell them where we were going," Montenegro said of the Cubans. "We weren't going to play along anymore. We left them by themselves."
Abel Prieto, a close adviser to Raul Castro and head of the Cuban delegation, said the dissident group had no standing and should never have been included in summit events.
"It's not possible to ask Cuba to dialogue with puppets of these special services agencies in the U.S.," he told El Nuevo Herald.
Panama airline deal
During the trip to Panama, Obama and Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela witnessed the signing of a deal for Panama's Copa Airlines to purchase 61 of U.S. airplane giant Boeing's 737 aircraft. The companies called it the largest commercial deal between a U.S. and Panamanian company in history.
Obama said it means 12,000 jobs in the United States. White House spokesman Josh Earnest followed up with a bigger number -- 40,000 U.S. jobs that he said will be not just at Boeing, but engine maker General Electric and other businesses involved in the supply chain.
Obama also made a quick unannounced tour of the Panama Canal, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
The president, wearing sunglasses with his jacket slung over his shoulder on a cloudy, steamy morning, walked over a pedestrian walkway that spanned the greenish-tinted water below. No ships came through while he was there, apparently for security reasons, although U.S. Secret Service gun boats were positioned in the water.
Between 12,000 and 14,000 ships transit each year between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the canal, which was controlled by the United States until the 1970s, when a treaty surrendered jurisdiction to Panama.
Later, Obama said he "saw the extraordinary progress that is being made" on a $5.2 billion project to expand the canal, scheduled to conclude early next year.
"It really is a symbol of human ingenuity but also Panama's central role in bridging two continents and bringing the hemisphere together," Obama said.
Panama held out hope that the summit, which concludes late this afternoon, would not only showcase the rapprochement between Cuba and the United States but also help mend tense U.S. relations with Venezuela.
"Where there are differences, let us create bridges," said Martin Torrijos, a leftist former president of Panama.
The White House in March announced sanctions against seven Venezuelans in protest of President Nicolas Maduro's crackdown on political opponents. Maduro has characterized the sanctions as direct aggression against Venezuela.
Information for this article was contributed by Josh Lederman, Andrea Rodriguez, Joshua Goodman, Jim Kuhnhenn and Scott Mayerowitz of The Associated Press; by Nicole Gaouette, David Lerman, Indira A.R. Lakshmanan and Toluse Olorunnipa of Bloomberg News; by Tracy Wilkinson of the Los Angeles Times; and by Tim Johnson of Tribune News Service.
A Section on 04/11/2015