He appointed new envoys for the task at the State and Defense Departments, and won a modicum of congressional support in a defense authorization bill he signed last week that removed a restriction on transfers from Guantánamo to overseas destinations.
According to both Obama and Castro, Canada hosted talks between envoys of their two countries, which led up to Wednesday's announcement.
A series of letters and envoys were sent to Iraq in a bid to moderate – or at least better focus – the brutality of international extremists there.
There have been no such meetings since January 2010, when the two sides reached an impasse over differences relating to the envoys' call for "genuine autonomy" for Tibet, while accepting that it remain part of China.
The nadir has been the resort by envoys in Britain to the Harry Potter books.
Among the powers Mr Sangay has taken on is the right to appoint the envoys' successors, who have yet to be chosen.
But those envoys resigned in June, citing the "deteriorating situation" in Tibet and China's failure to "respond positively" to autonomy proposals.
In those days it was usual for the Okinawan sailors conveying Chinese envoys to sacrifice a pig or a goat when crossing the Heishuigou.Down in the Yaeyama islands in southern Okinawa, lush green dollops ringed by coral reefs, a tiny handful of old men know the Senkakus well.
Depending on whose history you read, they were responding either to the "unjustified" killing of trade envoys or to the removal of stroppy emissaries who insisted on seeing the Oba during important religious ceremonies.
Mr Arafat's fear is that the envoys will agree with Mr Sharon: that the Palestinian commitment to a ceasefire will be measured by the extent to which he takes on Hamas.
There will be ceremonies for the foreign diplomats who helped save Jews including Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Swiss and Vatican envoys.
