CARICOM Chairman Urges Obama To End US Embargo On Cuba

Cuban President Raul Castro gives a speech during the closing ceremony of the Caricom Summit held in Santiago de Cuba in 2009.

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Mon. Dec. 8, 2014: Ahead of the opening of the Fifth CARICOM-Cuba Summit in Havana today, Chairman of the Caribbean Community and Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister, Gaston Browne, has called on President Obama to end the United States 54-year-old embargo against Cuba.

Speaking at the opening ceremony last night, Brown called the embargo “senseless” according to the Associated Press and said the body will “continue to stand with Cuba on the United States embargo against Cuba.”

“I call on President (Barack) Obama to lift that senseless, that senseless embargo now,” he was quoted as saying.

The summit officially gets underway today and aims to discuss economic and trade relations. Browne, Cuba’s President Raul Castro Ruz and Ambassador Irwin LaRocque, secretary-general of CARICOM will address Monday’s Opening Ceremony at the Place of the Revolution.