Read for you: Meeting with Nelson Mandela Barack Obama relies on his family

AFP WASHINGTON
 U.S. President Barack Obama will defer to the family of Nelson Mandela to decide on a possible meeting with former South African president, who remains hospitalized, during his visit to Africa, said Friday one of his advisers .When Barack Obama went for the first time in South Africa as U.S. President, the declining health of Mandela, 94, hospitalized for two weeks to a serious lung infection, makes such a meeting - the very awaited year - unlikely.

"We (...) are very respectful of the Mandela family about a possible meeting between the president and the Mandela family or Nelson Mandela" himself, said Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser.

"Ultimately, we want what's best for their health and peace of mind of the Mandela family," said Mr. Rhodes.

"We will be in touch with them. If (Obama) has the opportunity to see his family, it is certainly something that we will, "he said.

Barack Obama will spend a night in Johannesburg and another in Cape Town during his African tour, and plans to make a stop on the island housing the former prison on Robben Island where Mandela spent 18 years.

Obama met Mandela in 2005, shortly after his election to the U.S. Senate, when the former South African president was in Washington, and spoke on the phone several times since.

His wife, Michelle, had she been able to visit the icon of the anti-apartheid two years ago while traveling in Africa.

Barack Obama will leave Washington Wednesday, June 26 and will begin his tour in Senegal, where he will meet President Macky Sall and visit Goree Island, a place of memory of the slave trade off the coast of Dakar.

He will then travel to South Africa on June 29 in Johannesburg and Pretoria the following day, where he will include President Jacob Zuma. The same day, then go to Cape Town.

The last leg of his tour will take him to Tanzania.

Barack Obama did not, however, make Kenya, where his father was born and where his family still live. Uncertainty that followed the last elections in the country and that the Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta be prosecuted before the International Criminal Court prevent such a visit, officials said the White House.