A potential thaw in the relations between the Communist rulers of Cuba and the Obama Administration was signalled in Havana yesterday by an extraordinary encounter between a group of US politicians and Cuba’s ailing former president, Fidel Castro.

Castro, 88, who has not been seen in public since July 2006, met three members of a delegation of seven Democrats from the US congressional black caucus after his younger brother, Raúl, 77, the current Cuban President, welcomed them on Monday.

“Three of us met with Fidel Castro today and I must say . . . former President Fidel Castro was very engaging, very energetic, [and] discussed a wide range of issues,” Representative Barbara Lee, the leader of the delegation, said at a later news conference in Washington.

Mr Obama pledged during his run for the White House that he was open to discussions with Cuba — just as he said that he was willing to talk to regimes including Iran and North Korea — and later this month is expected to lift a ban on Cubans living in the US travelling to their home island and sending money to family members.

The end to the longstanding ban is set to be announced by Mr Obama before the Summit of the Americas, which begins on April 17 in Trinidad and Tobago, where the future of America’s relationship with Cuba will be an important issue.

Mr Obama is not expected to lift the trade embargo on Cuba — in place since the early 1960s — because it would be a highly controversial move that needs congressional approval, and because he believes that lifting the other bans might persuade Cuba to make some concessions of its own.

Joe Biden, the Vice-President, signalled a change in tone last week during a trip to Costa Rica and Chile. “Over the next decade and sooner there is likely to be, and needs to be, changes in the relationship between Cuba and the United States,” he said. Although a thawing of relations between the two countries will be fiercely resisted by hardliners in Cuba, and many Cuban-American exiles in the US who detest the Castros, Mr Obama and Raúl Castro appear to believe that there are mutual benefits.

Cuba is economically exhausted and desperately needs an influx of foreign capital. Cuban refugees trying to reach the US are a constant problem for authorities along the Florida coast. Any improvement of relations would help further to isolate Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, a thorn in Washington’s side and a close ally of the Castros.

Support for a rapprochement between America and Cuba has been growing in the US, across Latin America and within the Cuban-American community, many of whom are too young to have experienced the abuse of the Castro regime.

They have begun to assert a greater voice over the hardline views of their parents and grandparents.

There is also a growing consensus in Washington that US policy towards Cuba has been a failure because, nearly 50 years after the revolution, the Castros are still in power, having seen off ten US presidents.

Worlds apart: the 50-year war of words

1959 Communist revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro overthrow the American-backed Batista regime and nationalise American businesses, leading the US to break off relations and impose a trade embargo

1961 Kennedy backs the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban exiles. Castro seeks closer ties to the Soviet Union as a result

1962 The world stands at the brink of nuclear war after Castro agrees to allow Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba

1980 A temporary relaxation of travel restrictions leads to 125,000 Cubans fleeing to the United States

1996 Cuban fighters shoot down two American aircraft they claim had entered Cuban airspace

2008 Barack Obama promises to seek direct engagement with the Cuban Government, a first since the revolution

Source: Times database