President Barack Obama will make a historic visit to Cuba "in coming weeks," a US official said Wednesday.

President Barack Obama will make a historic visit to Cuba "in coming weeks," a US official said Wednesday.

"We can confirm that tomorrow the administration will announce the president's travel to Latin America, including Cuba, in the coming weeks,"  the official, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

It would be the first visit to Cuba by a sitting US president since Cuba's 1959 revolution. The last American leader to visit the island was Calvin Coolidge in 1928.  

The two Cold War foes restored diplomatic relations in July after a historic rapprochement between Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro the previous December.

Since then, the new openings have been small and incremental as the more than half-century-old US trade embargo on the island remains in place, with little prospect of repeal under a Republican-controlled Congress.

The Obama administration has instead focused on regulatory changes to ease travel and trade between the two countries, which have close family ties. There are 1.8 million Cuban Americans and Cuba has a population of 11 million.

On Tuesday, the US and Cuba signed an agreement authorizing daily US commercial flights to the island for the first time in more than 50 years.

US sanctions were imposed after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, moved toward revolutionary rule and then joined the Soviet bloc for decades.

Trade delegations have been flocking to Cuba lately, interested in how to engage its highly trained work force, and natural assets such as its sun-drenched Caribbean beaches, a huge draw for tourists.

Raul Castro took over the leadership from his brother Fidel in 2006 and was formally made president in 2008.