US President Barack Obama shakes hands with Cuban President Raul Castro at the FNB Stadium in Soweto, South Africa. Photo / AP
US President Barack Obama shakes hands with Cuban President Raul Castro at the FNB Stadium in Soweto, South Africa. Photo / AP
US President Barack Obama shook hands with Cuban President Raul Castro at a memorial service for Nelson Mandela, a simple gesture that signalled possible thawing between the leaders of two Cold War foes.
The brief encounter between the US and Cuban president came during a ceremony that celebrated the former South African president's legacy of reconciliation. Obama was greeting a line of world leaders attending the memorial in Johannesburg before delivering his own eulogy in which he urged a new generation to embrace Mandela's life work as their own.
More than half a century after the US cut off diplomatic relations with Cuba, such exchanges between American and Cuban leaders are exceedingly rare. US officials often have gone to great lengths to avoid having presidents meet Cuban leaders, even in passing.
In fact, when former Cuban President Fidel Castro, who led the nation for nearly half a century, shook hands with former President Bill Clinton at a UN Millennium Summit luncheon in 2000, he said Clinton had been the first US president to do so.
US President Barack Obama speaks to crowds attending the memorial service for former South African president Nelson Mandela. Photo / AP
Despite the handshake, Obama still offered an implicit criticism of governments like Cuba's when moments later, he said that too many people embrace Mandela's legacy of racial reconciliation but passionately resist economic and other reforms.
"There are too many who claim solidarity with Madiba's struggle for freedom but do not tolerate dissent from their own people," Obama said, referring to Mandela by his clan name.
Making his way to the podium for his speech, Obama also greeted Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff with a kiss on the cheek. Rousseff and Obama have clashed over reports the National Security Agency monitored her communications, leading the Brazilian leader to shelve a state trip to the US earlier this year in a show of anger. In another potentially uneasy exchange, Obama also briefly greeted Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose refusal to sign a security agreement with the US before year's end has irritated the Obama administration.
The US and Cuba have recently taken small steps toward political reconciliation, raising hopes that Washington and Havana could be on the verge of a breakthrough. But sceptics caution the two countries have shown subtle signs of thaw in the past, only to fall back into old recriminations.
Image 1 of 15: People sing and dance as they arrive for the memorial service for former South African president Nelson Mandela at the FNB Stadium in Soweto, near Johannesburg, South Africa, Tuesday Dec. 10, 2013. J
At a fundraiser in Miami last month, Obama argued for a renewed approach toward Cuba.
"We've started to see changes on the island," he said on November 8.
"We have to be creative," he added. "And we have to be thoughtful. And we have to continue to update our policies. Keep in mind that when Castro came to power, I was just born. So the notion that the same policies that we put in place in 1961 would somehow still be as effective as they are today in the age of the Internet and Google and world travel doesn't make sense."
In 2009, Obama made waves when he shook hands with the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, a strident critic of the United States, at the Summit of the Americas.
