Cuba announces talks with U.S. amid blackouts, protests on the island
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel confirmed in a press conference from Havana that the island is in talks with the United States.
“These talks have had the objective of looking for solutions through dialogue to the bilateral differences between our nations,” he said in Spanish in a news conference aired Friday.
Díaz-Canel said the Cuban government has expressed “the willingness to realize this process on the basis of equality and respect for the political systems of both the United States, along with the sovereignty and self-determination of our governments.”
President Trump said earlier this week that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was negotiating with Cuba’s leadership as the country faces a crippling energy crisis that has been exacerbated by a U.S. blockade of the island.
“It may be a friendly takeover, it may not be a friendly takeover,” Trump told reporters this week at a news conference in Florida. He added that he and Rubio would focus on that goal after the war with Iran.
The U.S. for decades has had a tense relationship with Cuba, but Trump’s turn to using military action to take out foreign opponents has raised anticipations that the island could be next. Rubio, whose family immigrated to the U.S. from Cuba in the 1950s, has long pushed for the U.S. to aggressively oppose the Caribbean nation’s leadership.
Rubio told senators earlier this year that the Trump administration would “love” to see a Cuban regime change, but cautioned that “does not mean we are going to provoke it directly.”
This is a developing story. Refresh for updates.
