Cuban President Raul Castro said in an interview released on Wednesday that he would like to meet president-elect Barack Obama on “neutral ground,” suggesting the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay.
The Cuban leader’s offer came in a rare interview in Havana with actor-director Sean Penn, who wrote about it for the Dec. 15 edition of The Nation magazine. The article was released on the magazine’s Web site.
Penn asked whether Castro would meet with Obama in Washington.
The Cuban president said he “would have to think about it,” but that it would not be fair for either leader to go to the other’s territory.
Instead he suggested the base at Guantanamo.
“We must meet and begin to solve our problems, and at the end of the meeting, we could give the president a gift ... We could send him home with the American flag that waves over Guantanamo Bay,” Castro said.
Cuba’s main focus in such a meeting would be on normalizing trade, Castro said.
“The only reason for the blockade is to hurt us,” he told Penn, using the term the communist leadership employs for the five-decade-old US trade embargo. “Nothing can deter the revolution. Let Cubans come to visit with their families. Let Americans come to Cuba.”
Obama has said he is willing to meet with Castro without preconditions and that after taking office on Jan. 20 he would “immediately” lift all restrictions on family travel and remittances to Cuba.
Under tough rules imposed under US President George W. Bush, Cuban-Americans can now visit their relatives on the island only once every three years.
But Obama has said he would not support lifting the embargo until Cuba releases all political prisoners.
Castro told Penn that “no country is 100 percent free of human rights abuses,” but insisted that “reports in the US media are highly exaggerated and hypocritical.”
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of