Obama Arrives in Cuba

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دوشنبه 2 حمل 1395 ساعت 10:09 نوشته شده توسط AFP

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Barack Obama on Sunday became the first US president in 88 years to visit Cuba, touching down in Havana for a landmark trip aimed at ending decades of Cold War animosity.

"Que bola Cuba?" Obama tweeted on landing, using Cuban slang to ask what's going on. "Just touched down here, looking forward to meeting and hearing directly from the Cuban people."

Obama is not only the first sitting US president since Fidel Castro's guerrillas overthrew the US-backed govement of Fulgencio Batista in 1959, but the first since President Calvin Coolidge in 1928.

Seeking to leave a historic foreign policy mark in his final year in office, Obama will tour old town Havana late Sunday, hold talks with Cuban President Raul Castro on Monday and attend a baseball game before leaving Tuesday.

For Cubans dreaming of escaping isolation and reinvigorating their threadbare economy, the visit has created huge excitement.

"A president of the United States in Cuba arriving in Havana on his Air Force One," wrote popular Cuban writer Leonardo Padura on the Cafefuerte blog.

"Never in my dreams or nightmares could we have imagined that we'd see such a thing."

But minutes before Obama took off for Cuba, police in Havana arrested dozens of people from a banned group demanding greater human rights, AFP reporters said.

The protesters were from the Ladies in White, formed by wives of former political prisoners. Police bundled them into vehicles outside a church where they attempt to hold protests almost every Sunday.

Republicans and some human rights activists have criticized Obama for dealing with Castro, given the lack of political, media and economic freedom in a country where the Communist Party retains tight control.

Dissidents called for "radical change" on the eve of the visit, but the Castro govement waed that lectures on democracy would be "absolutely off the table."

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