US President Barack Obama has shaken hands with Cuban President Raul Castro at a memorial service for Nelson Mandela, stoking talk of a possible rapprochement between the leaders of two Cold War foes.
The brief encounter between the American and Cuban presidents came during a ceremony in Johannesburg on Tuesday that celebrated former South African president Mandela's legacy of reconciliation. Obama was greeting a line of world leaders before delivering a eulogy in which he urged a new generation to embrace Mandela's life work as their own.
More than half a century after the US cut off diplomatic relations with Cuba, such exchanges between American and Cuban leaders are exceedingly rare. US officials have gone to great lengths to avoid having presidents meet Cuban leaders, even in passing.
When former Cuban president Fidel Castro, who led the nation for nearly half a century, shook hands with former US president Bill Clinton at a UN Millennium Summit luncheon in 2000, he said Clinton had been the first US president to do so.
Despite Tuesday's handshake, Obama still offered an implicit criticism of governments like Cuba's when moments later he said too many people embraced Mandela's legacy of racial reconciliation but passionately resisted economic and other reforms.
"There are too many who claim solidarity with Madiba's struggle for freedom but do not tolerate dissent from their own people," Obama said, referring to Mandela by his clan name.
Obama also greeted Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff with a kiss on the cheek. Rousseff and Obama have clashed over reports the National Security Agency monitored her communications, leading the Brazilian leader to shelve a state trip to the US this year.
In 2009, Obama made waves when at a summit he shook hands with late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, a strident critic of the US.
