President Obama plans to travel to Cuba within the next month, ABC News reported Wednesday, citing sources with knowledge of the plan.
Obama’s historic visit to the communist island nation would be the first by a U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge traveled there in 1928.
{mosads}The president said last winter that he would like to visit Cuba before he leaves office, but only if humanitarian conditions improve for the Cuban people and he has free rein to meet with political dissidents.
“I am very much interested in going to Cuba, but I think the conditions have to be right,” Obama told Yahoo News. “If I go on a visit, then part of the deal is that I get to talk to everybody.”
The president’s trip to Cuba has been long anticipated; both countries announced in December 2014 they would normalize diplomatic relations following five decades of tensions stemming from the Cold War.
Last summer, the U.S. and Cuba reopened embassies in their respective capitals for the first time in five decades. Since then, the countries have worked to re-establish long-severed trade and travel links.
The Obama administration announced last week it would begin accepting bids by U.S. airlines to fly direct to Cuba. And on Tuesday, it approved the first American-owned factory to be built there since Fidel Castro took power in 1959.