President Obama will face fresh pressure on Cuba and illegal drugs when he meets this week with Latin American leaders, some of whom have grown skeptical of his promise to forge a new era of partnership.
Mr. Obama will join more than 30 heads of state in the coastal Colombian city of Cartagena for the Summit of the Americas. Notably absent will be Cuban leader Raul Castro and the president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, who is boycotting over Havana’s continued exclusion from the hemispheric meetings.
The White House, wary of a foreign-policy distraction in an election year focused largely on domestic issues, has tried to play down a push by some regional leaders to include Cuba at future summits and also on decriminalizing drugs as a way of reducing cartel violence.
Instead, Mr. Obama will aim to highlight issues that are more politically palatable back home, namely the prospect of Latin America as a growth market for U.S. businesses. The White House says 40 percent of U.S. exports are to the Western Hemisphere.
To make that point even before leaving the U.S., Mr. Obama will stop first in Tampa, Fla., for a speech Friday on the benefits of boosting trade ties with Latin America. Florida is a pivotal state in the general election.
Mr. Obama also will join dozens of private-sector executives from U.S. companies at a CEO summit Saturday to discuss increasing business ties and trade with their Latin American counterparts.
The president planned to spend two nights in Cartagena and return to Washington late Sunday. In addition to the summit program, Mr. Obama will hold a separate meeting with Caribbean leaders and a one-on-one meeting and news conference with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and tour Cartagena’s historic San Pedro Claver church.
Mr. Obama’s reception at the Summit of the Americas probably will be more subdued than at the last meeting, in 2009 in the two-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Back then, the newly inaugurated American president was greeted with cheers, winning praise for pledging to be a humble, cooperative partner and raising the prospect of a shift in relations between the U.S. and Cuba.
The White House has tried to highlight steps Mr. Obama has taken to ease travel restrictions on Cuba and allow Cuban-Americans to send money back home. But the president has stopped well short of discussing lifting the 50-year U.S. economic embargo on the communist country.
The embargo is widely viewed in Latin America as a failure, and some countries have indicated they plan to push for Cuba’s future involvement in regional summits during the meetings in Colombia.
Raul Castro, who assumed power from his brother Fidel in 2008, had expressed a desire to attend this week’s summit, but the Colombian president delicately told Mr. Castro he would not be invited. That prevented Mr. Obama from facing a politically awkward meeting with the Cuban dictator or boycotting the summit himself.
The U.S. says Cuba does not meet the summit’s standards of democracy and therefore has no business taking part. Dan Restrepo, Mr. Obama’s top Latin America adviser, said the Obama administration would support Cuba’s inclusion if that nation undertook democratic and economic reforms.
“The path is there for Cuba’s return to the inter-America system, and we very much hope Cuba will travel down that path as soon as possible,” he said.
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