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US, Cuba presidents hold first face-to-face talks in decades

11 April 2015 22:20 (UTC +04:00)

The landmark meeting was held between President Barack Obama and his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro on Saturday in Panama City on the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas, amid the Obama administration’s efforts to restore ties with the Latin American country.

On Friday night, Obama and Castro “greeted each other and shook hands" at the historic 35-nation Summit of the Americas, at a dinner ceremony.

Obama had earlier spoken by phone with Castro before heading to Panama. They discussed the ongoing negotiations between Washington and Havana, and the summit on Wednesday by telephone.

The two leaders briefly met once before, when they shook hands at the funeral of South Africa’s anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela in December 2013.

Obama told a forum of Latin American civil society members in Panama City on Friday, hours before the start of the summit that the US will no longer interfere in Latin America.

"The days in which our agenda in this hemisphere so often presumed that the United States could meddle with impunity -- those days are passed," he said.

The United States broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961 and placed an official embargo against the country in 1962.

The two countries became ideological foes soon after the 1959 revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power and their ties remained hostile even after the end of the Cold War.

On December 17, 2014, Obama announced that the US would start talks with Cuba to normalize diplomatic relations, marking the most significant shift in American foreign policy towards the communist country in over 50 years.