Castro applauds Obama's efforts to ease tensions

President Raul Castro did something virtually unheard of in the annals of Cuban-US relations on Saturday: he apologised to his American counterpart.

During a lengthy speech to a summit of leaders from the Americas - a lesson in Cuban history from Havana's standpoint, to make up for never before having been invited to the gathering - Mr Castro defended the US president as an honest man and urged leaders to "support [Barack] Obama in his aim to liquidate the blockade [of Cuba]".

The two leaders, expected later to hold face-to-face talks later in the day, sealed their desire to push ahead with plans to normalise relations announced in December with a cordial handshake as leaders arrived at the Panama summit on Friday night.

Mr Castro, his voice rising at times as he reeled off a litany of criticisms of the US towards Cuba over the decades, said: "I apologise to Obama and others for expressing myself in these terms. It's just that passion comes out of my pores when I talk about the [Cuban] revolution. Obama isn't responsible for any of this. The 10 presidents who came before him all have a debt with us, but not Obama.

"It's right that I should apologise to him," he added. "My opinion is that Obama is an honest man." The US president, looked down, and appeared to be chewing gum, as the unexpected eulogy was delivered.

Mr Obama, who said that instead of ideology, he was "interested in results" and "not having battles that started before I was born", spoke with Mr Castro by telephone on Wednesday and has begun a review of whether Cuba belongs on a list of nations that the US considers sponsors of terrorism. Cuba is also demanding that the US give up the Guantanamo military base and end the economic embargo on the Caribbean island.

Mr Castro said Cuba had done some things in the past "that could be seen as terrorism, but when you're penned in, harassed to infinity, the only option is to give up or fight, and you know which one we chose".

Though Mr Obama stressed that there remained important differences between both sides, Washington says the expected meeting between the two presidents in Panama will be as momentous as Fidel Castro's talks with vice-president Richard Nixon in 1959, months after his victorious Cuban Revolution.

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But he blasted Mr Correa for seeking to "use the US as a handy excuse for political problems that may be occurring domestically". He also said, "jailing people if they disagree with you is not the right idea" and defended media plurality after the Ecuadorean leader slammed media monopolies that he said made Latin American press "very, very bad".

Mr Obama made no mention of Venezuela, after a storm over his designation of the Caribbean country as a national security threat, which he later appeared to back track on in a media interview.

But Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela president, was in fighting form, saying he would hand in a petition of 11m signatures to US diplomats at the summit to have the "very dangerous" executive order overturned. He urged Mr Obama to meet him to talk and said: "We are stubborn and obsessive when we fight for something that is just."

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