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| Confirmed: 'We're in talks' with Cuba on a wide range of issues, said Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes (L), shown with the president on Air Force One |
The handshake seen 'round the water cooler was no fluke, it turns out.
When President Barack Obama approached the podium at Nelson Mandela's memorial service and made a beeline for a row of foreign leaders – stopping first to shake Cuban dictator Raúl Castro's hand – it came after representatives from the two historically antagonistic nations had already been in talks for six months.
'[B]ehind the scenes,' two Daily Beast national security reporters wrote on Tuesday, 'U.S. and Cuban officials have held midlevel discussions in Havana and Washington on a range of issues, including direct postal service, migration issues, disaster response, and search and rescue at sea.'
During the president's trip back from South Africa, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters on Air Force One that 'it's been quite some time since the Presidents of the United States and Cuba were even in the same place.'
But he acknowledged that 'we’re in talks on issues associated with migration that, again, I think allow for there to be greater connectivity particularly among Cuban Americans and Cuba.'
News that the two leaders' deputies have been meeting in secret comes after nearly five years of a foreign policy thaw between the U.S. and the communist island nation, and nearly two decades after Mandela himself suggested that the two countries re-evaluate their icy Caribbean staring match.
The Obama administration has already turned heads by lifting an earlier prohibition on family travel and money transfers to Cuba. But a hostage situation and the iron fist that Castro wields against pro-Democracy activists have largely kept the U.S. at arms' length.
National Security Adviser Susan Rice laid out a case for the softer approach on Dec. 4 during a speech during a Washington, D.C. human right summit.
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