Obama first visit as president in Iraq, Raul Castro meets US lawmakers

On a trip shrouded in secrecy, Barack Obama flew into Iraq on Tuesday for a brief inspection of a war he opposed as a candidate and now vows to end as commander in chief. "There is still a lot of work to do here," he said.

His gleaming white and blue Air Force One touched down hours after a car bomb exploded in a Shiite neighborhood of the capital city, a deadly reminder of the violence that has claimed the lives at least 4,266 members of the U.S. military and thousands more Iraqis since March 2003.

Obama's motorcade rolled past troops standing at attention, en route to a meeting with several hundred men and women among the 139,000 American forces stationed in the country.

Raul Castro met with six visiting members of the Congressional Black Caucus for more than four hours, his first face-to-face discussions with U.S. leaders since he became Cuba's president last year.

Castro, who holds the rank of four-star army general, wore a business suit instead of his trademark olive-green fatigues for the closed-door meeting that ended around midnight.

"I'm convinced Raul Castro wants a normal relationship with the United States," California Democrat Barbara Lee told The Associated Press after the meeting. "He's serious."

"We talked about all the issues necessary to normal relations between our two countries," Barbara Lee said. "It was a constructive dialogue."

She said the delegation would report back on the talks to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and would also prepare a detailed look at everyday life in Cuba for President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Delegation members said they discussed topics as such as increased U.S.-Cuba trade and better cooperation in combating drug and human trafficking — but "we did not talk about specifics," Lee said during a Tuesday news conference.

Illinois Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush said he found Cuba's president "to be just the opposite of how he's being portrayed in the media."

"I think what really surprised me, but also endeared to him was his keen sense of humor, his sense of history and his basic human qualities," Rush said, adding that at times, the meeting's participants chatted "like old family members."

The Cuban government issued a statement calling the encounter "a broad exchange of ideas on many topics, with emphasis on the future evolution of bilateral relations and economic ties after the arrival of a new U.S. administration."

Lawmakers in both houses of the U.S. Congress have proposed a measure that wipe out bans on travel to Cuba except in extreme cases, effectively lifting a key component of the embargo. The visiting representatives said they would support those efforts.