Presidents of US and Cuba shake hands in brief but historic and apparently cordial greeting at Summit of the Americas in Panama

It was just a handshake and not even the first between Barack Obama and Raúl Castro, but when historians come to select the images that best reflect the legacy of the two leaders, this may be among the pictures that define their efforts to end half a century of Cold War animosity.

The widely anticipated moment came at the inauguration ceremony for the Summit of the Americas in Panama, the first occasion for the two presidents to get together since their surprise announcement on 17 December that they would move to normalise relations between their two countries.

The moment was captured on video by Telesur, a Venezuelan network. Obama and Castro, about to file into a meeting, can be seen greeting each other with little ceremony in a big crowd while the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, and the Cuban foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, look on. Obama and Castro shake hands multiple times while nodding and chatting comfortably.

The unofficial and slightly blurred images suggest a cordial encounter and a brief chat. The handshake appeared somewhat less emphatic than that between the two men at the funeral of Nelson Mandela in 2013.



A White House official confirmed the two men shook hands and spoke briefly.

“This was an informal interaction and there was not a substantive conversation between the two leaders,” the official said.

They are expected to “interact” more fully on Saturday to discuss moves to reopen embassies and widen travel opportunities between the two nations, having spoken to one another by phone before the summit, according to US officials. The foreign ministers of the two nations met on Thursday for the highest level meeting between the two sides since the era of president Eisenhower.

Adding to the momentum, the State Department has set the stage for the removal of Cuba from the US list of state sponsors of terror by completing a review of the island’s status. Obama is now poised to makes an announcement of a delisting, which would mark another important step towards improved ties.

Dozens of regional leaders are at the gathering to discuss a host of issues that are crucial to Latin America and its northern and Caribbean neighbours, but the Venezuelan crisis, peace talks in Colombia and moribund regional economy have all taken second place to the historic rapprochement between the heads of two states that once took the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Obama was still in a nappy during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when his predecessor John F Kennedy faced down the Soviet Union’s efforts to site atomic weapons on the island that is just a few dozen miles from Florida.

Castro was then the battle-hardened chief of the Cuban armed forces. At the behest of the president, his older brother Fidel, it was he who signed the deal in Moscow for the missiles to be based in Cuba despite the inevitable escalation of tensions with the United States.



It was the tensest moment in a relationship that soured soon after the Castros took power in a 1959, ousting the US-backed President Fulgencio Batista and expropriating the property of his supporters who fled to Miami, as well as US businessman and gangsters.

Washington responded with sanctions in 1960 and support for an attempted invasion at the Bay of Pigs a year later. For decades the antagonism between the two was one of the world’s defining conflicts. Depending on your view it was communists versus capitalists, dictators versus democrats, Latin left versus western right, the island versus the continent, David versus Goliath.

Today, however, they share the global stage not as antagonists but as two nations among many in a continent that – while still fractious – has not come together in such numbers for many decades.

Obama cast the move to end 50 years of hostile relations as a triumph for the Cuban people.

“As the United States begins a new chapter in our relationship with Cuba, we hope it will create an environment that improves the lives of the Cuban people,” he told a civil society forum, including Cuban dissidents. “Not because it is imposed by us, the United States, but through the talent and ingenuity and aspirations, and the conversations among Cubans from all walks of life so they can decide what the best course is for their prosperity.”

In a mark of relative humility, however, he said the US was no longer set on interfering in the affairs of its neighbours. “The days in which our agenda in this hemisphere so often presumed that the United States could meddle with impunity, those days are past,” he said.

The encounter was highly anticipated at the summit — the first to include Cuba. Castro and Obama announced in December their intentions to restore diplomatic relations between their two countries after more than 50 years of estrangement.

The White House says the interaction was informal and there was no substantive conversation between the men. Obama and Castro are expected to speak further on Saturday.

Obama and Castro last shook hands in 2013 at Nelson Mandela’s funeral in South Africa. They spoke by phone in December before announcing the deal to restore relations, and again on Wednesday before Obama left Washington on his trip to Jamaica and Panama.