Politics

Days 89-90: Obama Attends Summit Of The Americas

By Kevin Hechtkopf

April 20, 2009 / 8:30 AM EDT / CBS News

President Obama spent the weekend, days eighty-nine and ninety of his presidency, at the Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain – the capital of Trinidad and Tobago.

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The most talked about episode from the summit occurred Saturday morning when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a frequent critic of the U.S., walked over to Mr. Obama in the middle of a meeting to gave him a book. The book was "La Venas Abiertas de America" (or "The Open Veins of Latin America" in English) -- which is described by the Associated Press as an "essay on five centuries of exploitation of Latin America by North American and European interests."

Though Cuba was the only country from the Western Hemisphere not invited to the Summit, the communist nation was certainly a main topic of conversation.

In a press conference following the summit, Mr. Obama said the U.S. trade embargo of Cuba "hasn't worked the way we wanted it to" but he also made it clear that it will stay in place until Cuban leaders take more overt action toward freedom.

"The Cuban people aren't free and that's our lodestone, our north star when it comes to our policy in Cuba," he said.

Also this weekend, Mr. Obama made some new appointments in his weekly radio/Web address -- Jeffrey Zients (former CEO and Chairman of the Advisory Board Company) as his chief performance officer and Aneesh Chopra (Virginia's Secretary of Technology) as the Chief Technology Officer.

You can watch CBS Evening News coverage of the summit below: