Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro have talked on the phone, and Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez have met behind closed doors. Before leaving for the Summit of the Americas, President Obama said he was close to removing Cuba from America’s terror list, as the State Department recommended yesterday. So the stage is set for an historic encounter in Panama City.
Josh Lederman is with the Associated Press in Panama City. Ann Louise Bardach was on a Brookings Cuba studies panel, which proposed removing Cuba from the US terror list when Obama was first elected.