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Obama Defends Actions on Cuba and Promises Some Compromise With Congress

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Obama Defends New Cuba Outreach

President Obama on Friday said his decision to restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba creates an opportunity for change.

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President Obama on Friday said his decision to restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba creates an opportunity for change.CreditCredit...Jabin Botsford/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Friday rejected criticism that he should not have reopened American relations with Cuba because of the nation’s human rights record, saying the historic thaw would give the United States more sway over the Cuban government.

“I share the concerns of dissidents there and human rights activists that this is still a regime that represses its people,” Mr. Obama said at a wide-ranging news conference after a period of extraordinary domestic and foreign policy changes at the White House.

But even as he acknowledged that Cuba might take actions the United States opposes, Mr. Obama said, “The whole point of normalizing relations is that it gives us a greater opportunity to have influence with that government.”

“Change is going to come to Cuba,” he said. “It has to.”

It was the first time Mr. Obama had taken questions from reporters since his announcement on Wednesday that he would move to normalize relations with Cuba, establishing an embassy in Havana and relaxing trade and financial restrictions that have been in place for a half-century.

He also scolded Sony Pictures for pulling back the movie “The Interview” after a cyberattack for which the White House is blaming North Korea. “I think they made a mistake,” he said.

As in previous years, the president used his annual late-December news conference to make the case that his policies had helped the economy and burnished the United States’ reputation around the world. “We’ve set the stage for this American moment,” he said, “and I’m going to spend every minute of my last two years making sure that we seize it.”

Mr. Obama was upbeat in the nearly hourlong exchange with the news media, in which he called only on women. It was his last public event before departing Friday for a vacation with his family in Hawaii.

He said he had shown that he could tackle steep challenges, including the fight against the Islamic State militant group, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and a mass migration of unaccompanied minors from Central America across the border.

Mr. Obama vowed to seek compromise with Republicans in Congress where possible, such as on a tax overhaul and rebuilding infrastructure, but pledged to veto efforts to roll back his health care law and financial regulations.

He also indicated that he had no intention of pulling back on his executive measures to circumvent Congress, which he has used in recent weeks to take sweeping unilateral action on immigration, re-establish diplomatic and commercial ties with Cuba and strike a climate agreement with China.

“I intend to continue to do what I’ve been doing,” he said, “which is where I see a big problem and the opportunity to help the American people, and it is within my lawful authority to provide that help, I’m going to do it.”

Still, the president acknowledged that he would have to work with Congress on contentious issues, including lifting the 54-year-old American trade embargo against Cuba. “We cannot unilaterally bring down the embargo,” he said, although his administration is undertaking a major effort to loosen key elements.

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Obama Comments on Executive Actions

At his end-of-year news conference, President Obama talked about his executive action on immigration and his hopes that Congress will work with him to pass a variety of bills.

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At his end-of-year news conference, President Obama talked about his executive action on immigration and his hopes that Congress will work with him to pass a variety of bills.CreditCredit...Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

“Ultimately, we need to go ahead and pull down the embargo, which I think has been self-defeating in advancing the aims that we’re interested in,” he said. “But I don’t anticipate that that happens right away.”

While he said he had no plans to visit Cuba in the near term, he recounted friendly moments during a telephone call this week with President Raúl Castro. He said the two had joked about being long-winded and about Fidel Castro, Raúl’s brother.

After Mr. Obama apologized for speaking for so long during the call, he said, Mr. Castro told him, “You’re still a young man, and you have still the chance to break Fidel’s record: He once spoke seven hours straight.”

Then, Mr. Obama added, the Cuban president proceeded to speak for twice as long as he had.

Closer to home, Mr. Obama told reporters he was eager to compromise with the new Republican-controlled Congress, including on revamping the nation’s tax system, which he said he would push to make simpler and fairer.

“I want to work with this new Congress to get things done,” the president said. “We’re going to disagree on some things, but there are going to be areas of agreement, and we’ve got to be able to make that happen, and that’s going to involve compromise once in a while.”

Mr. Obama said he would push to change rules that allow “corporate inversions,” when American companies move their headquarters “on paper” to another country in order to avoid taxes.

He reminded Republicans that they would also have to consider his priorities. “In order for their initiatives to become law, I’m going to have to sign off,” he said, “and that means they have to take into account the issues that I care about, just as I’m going to take into account the issues that they care about.”

Mr. Obama refused to say what he would do if Congress tried to force his hand on approving the Keystone XL pipeline, saying only, “I’ll see what they do.”

But he played down the advantages of the pipeline and said he wanted to make sure it would not accelerate climate change.

“There’s been this tendency to really hype this thing as some magic formula to what ails the U.S. economy, and it’s hard to see on paper where exactly they’re getting that information,” he said.

Mr. Obama said he would seek to carry out quickly the recommendations of a task force he named this week on law enforcement and race relations, some of them by executive order and some by legislation.

The public conversation set off by the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of white police officers in places like Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island is healthy, he said, adding that he was willing to take on big problems.

“My presidency is entering the fourth quarter,” Mr. Obama said. “Interesting stuff happens in the fourth quarter, and I’m looking forward to it.”

Michael D. Shear and Peter Baker contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Obama Defends Actions on Cuba and Promises Some Compromise With Congress. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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