President Barack Obama is in Cuba for a historic three-day visit to the island and talks with its communist leader.
He is the first sitting United States president to visit since the 1959 revolution, which heralded decades of hostility between the two countries.
Mr Obama said change would happen in Cuba and that Cuban President Raul Castro understood that.
The two leaders met later on Monday to talk about trade and to hold a joint news conference.
For a US president to touch down at Jose Marti airport in Havana and be warmly greeted by Cuban’s foreign minister was until recently unthinkable.
For decades, the US and Cuba were engaged in a bitter stand-off, triggered by the overthrow of US-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista by Communist leader Fidel Castro in 1959.
The US broke off diplomatic relations and imposed a trade embargo.
But President Obama undertook two years of secret talks which led to the announcement in December 2014 that the two countries would restore diplomatic relations.
Since then, there have been a series of symbolic moments, such as the first formal meeting of Presidents Obama and Castro at a regional summit in Panama and the opening of embassies in Havana and Washington DC.
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