White House open to Castro visit

The White House said Thursday it wouldn’t rule out a visit by Cuban president Raúl Castro to Washington for a meeting with President Obama.

“The president has had the leaders of both Burma and China to the United States,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. “And for that reason, I wouldn’t rule out a visit from President Castro.”

On Wednesday, Obama announced historic, sweeping changes to U.S.-Cuba policy, including the reestablishment of an embassy in Havana and a loosening of travel and trade restrictions.

The president also said he would not rule out traveling to Cuba, where no U.S. president has visited in decades.

Earnest said there could be some strategic value in a high-level visit, saying there were “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.”

He said in the case of China and Burma, the president was able to urge leaders there “to do a better job of respecting universal human rights.”

“The president traveled to those countries, both because he believed it’s in our national security interest, but also because he viewed it as an important opportunity to raise concerns about those nations’ humans right records, that having an open relationship in which the president engages with the leaders of other countries can actually serve as a useful way to shine a spotlight on the shortcomings of other countries’ records as it relates to human rights,” Earnest said.

He also pointed to the recent insistence during Obama’s trip to Asia that the Chinese president participate in a news conference, where a reporter from The New York Times pressed Xi Jinping about treatment of journalists within the country.

“That kind of exchange that attracted that kind of attention would not have occurred if the president refused to visit the country or if we refuse to visit with that country because we had objections to their human rights record,” Earnest said.