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Obama to attend Americas summit in April

Xinhua, March 18, 2015 Adjust font size:

U.S. President Barack Obama will travel southward next month for a summit of the Americas and meetings with regional leaders, the White House said Wednesday.

The president will join 33 other leaders for the seventh Summit of the Americas, which is slated for April 10-11 in Panama, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in a statement.

Cuban leader Raul Castro will attend the summit for the first time in over half a century, as Washington has not boycotted his appearance following a detente in bilateral relations in December.

The Obama administration is seeking to reopen embassies ahead of the Panama summit, though three rounds of talks between Washington and Havana have failed to make much headway in normalizing bilateral ties.

The upcoming trip, starting on April 8, will first take Obama to Jamaica, where he will meet with leaders from the 15-member Caribbean Community, Earnest said.

While in Panama, Obama will have bilateral talks with Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela and meet with leaders from the Central American Integration System, an economic and political group comprising El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Panama, Earnest said. Endi