Obama calls for 'signal' from Cuba ahead of Latin America visit

President Barack Obama Thursday urged Cuba to show signs of change, as the United States and its communist neighbour work on warming up relations after a half century of strained Cold War ties.
"I don't expect Cuba to beg. No one is asking for anyone to beg. What we're looking for is some signal that there are going to be changes in how Cuba operates," Obama told CNN television hours before his departure to Mexico his first visit to Latin America as US president.
Obama said he hoped Havana would show signs of change to keep momentum building in improving relations. The neighbours do not have full diplomatic ties and the United States has had a full economic embargo on Cuba since 1962.
The US president called for Cuban political prisoners to be released and free speech to be allowed in the interest of "a further thawing of relations" between the US and the Americas' only communist country.
Cuba says it has no political prisoners. Rights groups in Cuba, however, say there are more than 200 dissidents behind bars.
Obama announced on Monday the US would lift curbs on travel and money transfers by Cuban-Americans to the island, an attempt to defuse tensions Obama described as "an important first step."
"I think it's a signal of our good faith that we wanted to move beyond the Cold War mentality that's existed over the last 50 years. And hopefully we'll see some signs that Cuba wants to reciprocate," Obama said.
But former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, 82, immediately derided the gesture, saying Cuba would not beg, and calling for more comprehensive measures including an end to the US economic embargo and an end to special immigration treatment the United States gives Cubans. Havana says that treatment fuels illegal emigration and brain drain.
The United States gives Cubans immmediate residency and expedited citizenship if they set foot on US soil -- special considerations not given people fleeing other communist nations. The United States has more than 1.25 million Cuban Americans, most in the southeastern state of Florida, close to Cuba, which has more than 11 million people.
While Obama enjoys enormous goodwill and popularity in most of Latin America, Cuba remains a contentious issue across the region, where left-leaning governments are in power from Brazil to Bolivia to Argentina and Venezuela.
Latin American and Caribbean nations agreed in a December summit in Brazil that the ongoing embargo against Cuba was unjust and unnecessary, and should go.
Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa said Monday he would use part of his five-minute speech at the summit to blast the embargo.
Cuba, he said, "cannot continue to be excluded from the inter-American system -- that's barbaric."
Washington's reply has been that the embargo will not end as long as Cuba remains undemocratic and imprisons political dissidents.
From Mexico, Obama will travel to Trinidad and Tobago where he will meet 33 other leaders from the Western hemisphere in a Summit of the Americas, which begins on Friday in Port-of-Spain.