Obama: "Cuba is not a threat to the US"

It's a head-to-head now etched in history. For the first time since 1956, the Heads of State of Cuba and the United States held talks Saturday night at a formal meeting. On the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas, Raul Castro and Barack Obama have expressed briefly to reporters before going on their private conversation that was "frank and fruitful," the US president. On the menu of their discussion included, according to the White House, the resumption of diplomatic relations severed in 1961.

"My message here is that the Cold War is over, Obama said at a press conference. It must be very clear: Cuba is not a threat to the United States. We not n'œuvrons for regime change, we work to ensure that Cubans have the freedom and be masters of their destiny and their own lives, and (we work) to support civil society " .

Although the two leaders stressed that they had significant disagreements, Cuban President expressed his desire to move forward in a "respectful dialogue and called Obama an honest man." "I consider it a positive step his recent statement that he would make a decision soon on the presence of Cuba on a list of state sponsors of terrorism, a list in which we would never have been included, said Raul Castro.

The withdrawal of this list is the main condition set by Cuba to the reopening of embassies in both countries. The path of standardization promises to be long, particularly because of the thorny issue of the US embargo.