(VOVworld) –  President Barack Obama hopes to visit Cuba in 2016,  he said in an exclusive interview with Yahoo News released on Monday. Obama said that he is "very much interested" in visiting Cuba during his last year in office and strongly suggested that he would make a decision on the matter within "the next several months. Obama said positive changes have been seen in bilateral ties between Washington and Havana and the normalization of the two countries’ ties has been strongly supported by people of both countries. He said that as he believes that progress is occurring in freedom and the possibilities for the average Cuban, he would like to use an official visit as a way to emphasize that progress. In the interview, which coincided with the anniversary of the announcement that Havana and Washington would restore relations, Obama hailed Cuban President Raul Castro’s willingness to improve ties with Washington pragmatic.