http://www.newsmax.com/PrintTemplate.aspx/?nodeid=613982Newsmax
Likely Next Steps: Obama Off to Cuba, Castro Visits US
Friday, December 19, 2014 08:19 AM
By: Melissa Clyne
Just a day after his stunning announcement that the United States will re-establish a diplomatic relationship with Cuba — including opening an embassy in Havana — President Barack Obama is weighing a trip to the island nation or hosting a visit from its communist leader, Raul Castro.
"I don’t have any current plans, but let’s see how things evolve," Obama told ABC "World News Tonight" anchor David Muir.
Time reports that Secretary of State John Kerry is already planning a trip there, according to a statement issued Thursday in which he said: "I look forward to being the first Secretary of State in 60 years to visit Cuba."
Earlier Thursday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the president was not "ruling out" a visit to Cuba, with Earnest adding that there could be "important national security reasons for the president to travel to other countries that have what we would describe at best as checkered human rights records."
Earnest noted that the president has visited both Burma and Beijing.
"It is not unprecedented for us to go places and interact with countries with whom we have a very fundamental difference of opinion about that country’s treatment of their citizens," Earnest said.
"A day after we were in Beijing, we traveled to Burma — again, a country that does not have a stellar record when it comes to respecting basic human and political rights. But we engage those countries and we engage the leadership of those countries, and we do so for a variety of reasons.
"Sometimes, and often, it serves our national security interests to do so, but also because it’s consistent with the President’s view that by engaging with the leaders of these countries and by engaging with the people of these countries, we can facilitate more respect for basic human rights."
And "the president has had the leaders of both Burma and China to the United States," Earnest said. "And for that reason, I wouldn't rule out a visit from President Castro."
Earnest also noted that the natural beauty of Cuba might entice the president to make a trip there.
"Like many Americans, (Obama) has seen that Cuba is a place where they have a beautiful climate and a lot of fun things to do, so, if there's an opportunity for the president to visit, I'm sure he wouldn't turn it down," Earnest said.
The Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roberta Jacobson, said that human rights were not a "direct conditionality" of the United States' decision to restore diplomacy with Cuba, according to NPR.
No sitting president has visited Cuba since Calvin Coolidge in 1928, according to ABC News, citing the American Presidency Project at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
