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Historic Summit of Americas starts with Obama, Castro


US President Barack Obama and Cuba's Raul Castro stood with other regional leaders at the start of a historic Summit of the Americas on Friday.

Obama, separated by the presidents of Ecuador and El Salvador, stood in the second of three rows at a Panama City convention center as the country's national anthem was sung.

Before the meeting with Cuban leader Raul Castro, Obama met two Cuban dissidents.

The US President held a closed-door meeting with prominent critics of Castro's regime, as well as a dozen other dissidents from the Americas, in a move sure to provoke ire in Havana.

The gathering took place on the sidelines of a civil society meeting linked to the Summit of the Americas in Panama.

Before the closed-door meeting, Obama told rights activists from across the region that "(we) stand by you every step of the way."

"When we speak out on behalf of somebody who has been imprisoned for no other reason than because they spoke truth to power, when we are helping an organization that is trying to empower a minority inside a country get more access to resources, we're not doing that because it serves our own interests," Obama said.

"We're doing it because we think it's the right thing to do." — Agence France-Presse

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