Raul Castro open to meeting Obama - possibly at Guantanamo

Nov 26, 2008, 22:48 GMT

Washington - Cuban President Raul Castro has said he is open to meeting US president Barack Obama at a neutral location, and suggested Guantanamo Bay as a possible venue.

Castro, in an interview with actor Sean Penn published online Wednesday in the Nation, a leftist US weekly, said he would not be willing to go to Washington and understands a US president would not want to travel to Havana.

'Perhaps we could meet at Guantanamo,' Castro said. 'We must meet and begin to solve our problems, and at the end of the meeting, we could give the president a gift ... we could send him home with the American flag that waves over Guantanamo Bay.'

Obama has said he is open to holding talks with US foes traditionally shunned by the White House. He has said he would do so without preconditions but with preparations.

Castro, 77, when asked whether he would be willing to meet with Obama, replied he 'would have to think about it' and 'would discuss it with all my comrades in leadership.'

'Personally, I think it would not be fair that I be the first to visit, because it is always the Latin American presidents who go to the United States first,' he said.

'But it would also be unfair to expect the president of the United States to come to Cuba,' Castro added. 'We should meet in a neutral place.'

The US Navy has leased Guantanamo Bay since the early part of the 1900s and argues that the contract states that both sides must agree to end the arrangement. That's why the Navy has stayed despite demands by the Cubans to return it.

The Navy pays the Cuban government 4,085 dollars annually. Longtime leader Fidel Castro, who officially retired in February, famously refused to cash the checks and kept them in a drawer.

Guantanamo, however, has been a rare point of contact between the two enemies. Since the mid-1990s, the US commander at the base has met with a Cuban counterpart on a monthly basis, with each rotating as host in small building near the fence line. The two militaries have also held joint exercises in combating wild fires.