A White House spokesman said Secretary of State John Kerry is not taking a separate trip to Cuba because it was never finalized and would now be redundant in light of President Obama’s upcoming trip to the communist island later this month, not because of an alleged fight over which political dissidents Kerry could visit during his trip.
Press secretary Josh Earnest said Kerry will now travel with President Obama to Cuba later this month, and stressed that Cuban officials are not able to dictate who the U.S. delegation can meet.
“So there is no real dispute about this … because the president will meet with whomever he chooses to meet with,” press secretary Josh Earnest said on Friday. The Castro regime is entitled to its own opinion but “it’s not going to have an impact on the decision that we make about with whom the president will meet; that’s a decision that we’ll make on our own without any sort of negotiation with the Cubans,” Earnest said.
Earnest said the administration considered dispatching Kerry to Havana but that nothing was set. Once the president decided to travel there, “a secretary-level trip prior to the president’s one was not viewed as necessary,” Earnest said.
Kerry will accompany Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and other administration officials during the March 20-22 trip, Earnest said. It’s the first trip by a U.S. president to the sanctioned nation in 88 years.
