President Barack Obama Met With Cuban Leader Raul Castro

The two leaders met in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly which took place on Tuesday 29th September. They proceeded to shake hands publicly before moving into private to conduct talks. This is the second time during 2015 that Obama and Castro have met after the US and Cuba have been alienated for decades.

Mr. Castro, whilst at the UN called for America to lift the economic sanctions it has placed on Cuba, he stated that until the embargo was abolished, normal relations between the two would not be possible. The embargo on Cuba has been in place for 55 years since 1960 and remains a bone of contention between the US and Cuba. Obama, in his address to the UN stated that he believed that any embargoes that should no longer be in place would unavoidably be lifted at some point.

Moves have been made in this direction as there is yet another UN General Assembly set for 27th October in order to discuss a resolution to the embargo and hold a vote on its abolition. This will be the twenty fourth time that a vote will be held on the issue, in previous votes the opposition to its abolition has generally been from the US and Israel. In the 2014 vote, from the 193 nation assembly, 188 nations voted to abolish the embargo whilst the US and Israel voted to keep it and three Pacific Island nations abstained.

It looks like this has the potential to change in October though as the US President has himself spoken out about the embargo and the two have been moving towards normalizing their relationship. Since this was announced last year, a number of steps have been taken in this direction, both the embassies have reopened in Havana and Washington DC and even spoke on the phone prior to the Pope’s visit to Cuba, before arriving in the US. It still remains to be seen in which direction the vote will go in October.´