CUBAN President Raul Castro met his US counterpart Barack Obama on the fringes of the UN general assembly on Tuesday to discuss detente between their two countries.

Following the private meeting, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said that speeding up the process would require Mr Obama to use his executive authority to substantially modify his country’s 50-year blockade on Cuba.

Mr Rodriguez said that actions Mr Obama had taken so far have had “a very limited value, a very limited scope and do not deal with any significant aspects when it comes to the implementation of the blockade against Cuba.”

But lifting the blockade requires a vote in the US Congress, where Cuba still faces opposition from Republicans and some Democrats.

In his address to the general assembly on Monday, Mr Obama said he was confident that Congress would “inevitably lift an embargo that should not be in place anymore.”