Obama Will Interact with Raúl Castro at the Summit of the Americas in Panama

The presidents of the United States and Cuba signed agreements restoring diplomatic relations in 2014. A meeting between the leaders has not yet been officially scheduled.

U.S. President Barack Obama will engage with his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro during the Summit of the Americas next week in Panama, although a bilateral meeting is not scheduled, Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson said on Friday.

“There will be an interaction with Raúl Castro,” Jacobson said during a forum at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

But Jacobson, assistant secretary for the Western Hemisphere, did not specify the nature of the meeting and stressed that, so far, the only bilateral meeting scheduled for Obama will be with the Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela.

The White House indicated that there is still no decision about a possible Obama meeting with Raúl Castro on the sidelines of the summit.

The prospect of a meeting between the leaders of United States and Cuba generated great expectations after the rapprochement between the two countries was agreed to in December, after more than half a century of hostilities and the breakdown of diplomatic relations.

Obama and Castro, who talked by phone to seal the deal, staged a handshake in 2013 during the funeral of South African leader Nelson Mandela, the first public contact between the presidents of the two countries since the relations broke off in 1961.

Varela expressed on Thursday that the Summit of the Americas in Panama is preparing for a meeting between Obama and Castro, but acknowledged that the governments of the United States and Cuba must confirm this meeting.

High-level delegations from the United States and Cuba held several meetings alternately in Havana and Washington to advance the re-establishment of diplomatic ties.