US President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro held talks today on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

In his speech to the assembly yesterday, Castro said Cuba and the United States could normalize ties only after Washington ended its trade embargo and returned the American naval base at Guantanamo to Cuban control.

He added that Cuban must be "compensated" for the decades-old U.S. embargo if relations between the former Cold War enemies were to continue to improve.

Castro and Obama stunned the world last December by announcing détente after more than decades of animosity. On July 20, the United States and Cuba restored diplomatic relations after a break of 54 years.

In his own speech at the UN, Obama said that while the United States still had differences with the Cuban government over human rights and other issues, he was confident that with increased diplomatic, commercial and other contacts "our Congress will inevitably lift an embargo that should not be in place anymore."

At a brief photocall in a U.N. conference room, Obama and Castro exchanged pleasantries and chuckled about the height difference between the two men.