Venezuela may spoil Obama-Castro fiesta

Escalating tensions between Washington and Venezuela are likely to eclipse the much-awaited meeting between President Barack Obama and Cuban dictator Raúl Castro at the upcoming Summit of the Americas in Panama, which is expected to mark a historic return of Cuba to the inter-American diplomatic community.

Until now, the April 10-11 summit — a meeting between the U.S. president and his Latin American and Caribbean counterparts that takes place every three or four years — was expected to be dominated by images of an Obama-Castro handshake, or embrace. It will be the first Summit of the Americas that will include Cuba, after decades in which U.S. presidents had insisted that only democratic nations could participate.

In recent weeks, after two rounds of official U.S.-Cuba talks to normalize bilateral relations (a third is scheduled to start Monday), U.S. and Cuban officials had voiced hopes of announcing the reopening of their respective embassies in Washington and Havana before or during the Summit of the Americas.

The summit itself was expected to be a celebration of the U.S.-Cuba reconciliation, and a major step to improve U.S.-Latin American relations after decades in which Latin American countries had been collectively demanding the lifting of U.S. sanctions on the island.

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