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1st LD Writethru: Obama to visit Cuba next month

Xinhua, February 18, 2016 Adjust font size:

U.S. President Barack Obama will visit Cuba on March 21 and 22, the White House announced Thursday.

"The president will work to build on the progress we have made toward normalization of relations with Cuba," it said.

Calling the trip a "historic" one, the statement said the visit, the first by a sitting U.S. president in nearly 90 years, demonstrated Obama's commitment to chart a new course for U.S.-Cuba relations.

The last and only sitting U.S. president to have visited the island nation was Calvin Coolidge, who addressed the Sixth Annual International Conference of American States in Havana in 1928.

Jimmy Carter traveled to Cuba in 2002, 20 years after leaving the Oval Office, at the invitation of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

In December 2014, Obama announced plans to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba, ending a policy of isolation that had lasted more than five decades. The two countries re-established diplomatic ties and reopened embassies in each other's capital in 2015. Endi