WASHINGTON, Mar 18: Barack Obama touches down in Havana on Sunday to cap a long-unimaginable rapprochement with Cuba and burnish a presidential legacy dulled by Middle East quagmires and partisan sniping.
As Air Force One rolls to a stop, Obama will become the first sitting US president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge arrived on a battleship in 1928, before the discovery of penicillin or invention of the ballpoint pen.
With wife Michelle and daughters Sasha and Malia in tow, Obama will tour Old Havana, sit down with Raul Castro -- although not his brother Fidel -- and speak directly to Cubans who have been inculcated in a lifetime of propaganda against imperialist Yankees. By making the high-profile hop across the 90 mile (150 kilometer) Straits of Florida, he will also want to dispense with tired stereotypes which Americans have of Cuba.     ?AFP