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U.N. Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon is praising presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro for moving to restore U.S.-Cuban diplomatic relations after decades of hostility.
Ban says at the Summit of the Americas that the region is "overcoming longstanding divisions in historic ways, as we see in this very room."
He notes that it's the first time all 35 nations of the Americas have attended the summit. Cuba was excluded for years, and Ban says President Raul Castro's presence Friday evening fulfills a wish felt across the region.
Ban says that it's a move in line with the United Nations Charter and its "goal of promoting good neighborliness."
Pope Francis' star power is being felt at the Summit of Americas.
In a message read by Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, the first pope from Latin America has urged leaders to seek common ground to solve problems afflicting the heavily Roman Catholic region.
The Argentine-born pontiff said that even as Latin American nations have progressed economically in recent years, large numbers of people continue to live in poverty and reducing inequality will only come about with concerted government action.
Parolin read the message at the summit's opening ceremony Friday evening. In it the pope said he wanted to encourage "mutual cooperation and maximum effort required to overcome differences on the road to the common good."
Host Panama invited the Vatican to participate in the summit for the first time in the meeting's 21-year history.
The pope and Parolin played a role in brokering secret talks between Cuba and the United States that led President Barack Obama in December to announce that he was opening negotiations on restoring ties with the communist island.
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President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro have exchanged greetings and handshakes at the opening of the Summit of the Americas in Panama.
It's the first such interaction between the two men in three years, and one of the only times that the leaders of the U.S. and Cuba have spoken to one another in more than a half century.
The moment was captured on a video taken by a reporter for the Venezuelan television network Telesur. Obama and Castro can be seen greeting each other in a big crowd while U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez look on. Obama and Castro shake hands multiple times while nodding and chatting comfortably.
The encounter was highly anticipated at the summit — the first to include Cuba. Castro and Obama announced in December their intentions to restore diplomatic relations between their two countries after more than 50 years of estrangement.
The White House says the interaction was informal and there was no substantive conversation between the men. Obama and Castro are expected to speak further on Saturday.
Obama and Castro last shook hands in 2013 at Nelson Mandela's funeral in South Africa. They spoke by phone in December before announcing the deal to restore relations, and again on Wednesday before Obama left Washington on his trip to Jamaica and Panama.
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