Interview: Obama faces challenge of making his Cuba legacy irreversible -- analyst

As U.S. President Barack Obama is to visit Cuba, his biggest challenge is to make his legacy of rapprochement with Cuba irreversible, an analyst said Saturday.

Obama, who has announced to visit Cuba on March 21-22, will become the first sitting U.S. president to travel to the Caribbean country in 88 years.

"The (Obama) administration's challenge is to make this process irreversible" as many people think it can be reversed if a Republican wins the upcoming presidential race in the United States, Reynaldo Taladrid told a TV news show.

"It seems one of Obama's most important legacies will be restoring ties with Cuba," Taladrid said, especially given Obama's foreign policy failures on Syria and Iraq.

But that legacy appears fragile, with overwhelming opposition to U.S.-Cuba rapprochement from the Republican-controlled Congress, which has resisted White House calls to lift the 50-year trade embargo on Cuba.

"I think Obama is going to announce new measures to eliminate bits and pieces of the embargo ... and that's a positive step," said the journalist and foreign affairs analyst.

However, the advances made so far could be dismantled by opponents of Obama's new Cuba policy, and restored ties could be used to unduly impact the island's development, he said.

"The danger lies in conditioning the normalization of ties between two independent states and neighbors, and one dictates the other's internal affairs," said Taladrid.

The United States and Cuba restored diplomatic relations in July 2015 and re-opened embassies in each other's capital after bitter rivalry lasting over half a century.

However, Washington continues to maintain a trade embargo on Cuba mandated by U.S. Congress.

Before ties are fully normalized, Havana demanded the end of the blockade, the return of Guantanamo Bay naval base, and compensation for the costs caused by decades of economic sanctions. Endi