Obama Says Opening to Cuba Will Take Years To Pay off
Change will come in ‘fits and starts,’ the president predicts.
U.S. President Barack Obama listens to a question during a news conference at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Friday, Dec. 19, 2014.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
President Barack Obama said the full opening of relations between Cuba and the U.S. may take years, even as he offered assurances the new U.S. stance will bring change to the island nation’s closed society.
Despite vehement criticism from Republican lawmakers and some Democrats, the president said he was confident his reversal of the half-century-long U.S. effort to isolate its Caribbean neighbor 90 miles off the coast of Florida was the right course.