Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel on Tuesday said that the US would face “unbreakable resistance” if it tries to take over the island nation, as authorities scrambled to fix a nationwide electricity blackout.
Cuba’s government is under pressure, with Washington enforcing an oil blockade and saying that it wants to end the nearly seven-decade-old US standoff with the state.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Cuba’s decision announced this week to let exiles invest and own businesses did not go far enough to allow free-market reforms that the administration of US President Donald Trump has asked for.
Photo: AFP
“What they announced yesterday is not dramatic enough. It’s not going to fix it. So they’ve got some big decisions to make,” Rubio told reporters at the White House.
Trump on Monday said that he would “take” Cuba, adding: “We’ll be doing something with Cuba very soon.”
However, Diaz-Canel was defiant in the face of Washington’s threats.
“Faced with the worst-case scenario, Cuba has one guarantee: Any external aggressor will encounter an unbreakable resistance,” he wrote on X.
Cuba is open to broad talks with Washington and allowing more investment, but it will not discuss changing its political system, an envoy told reporters on Tuesday.
Tanieris Dieguez, Cuba’s deputy chief of mission in Washington, said that the two countries “have a lot of things to put on the table,” but that neither should ask the other to change its government.
“Nothing related with our political system, nothing with our political model — our constitutional model — is part of the negotiations and never will it be part of that,” Dieguez said. “The only thing that Cuba asks for any conversation is respect to our sovereignty and to our right to self-determination.”
The New York Times, quoting unnamed US officials, said that the Trump administration had called for Cuba to sack Diaz-Canel.
Rubio on Tuesday denied the report, writing on X that the article was “fake” and was among media reports that relied on “charlatans and liars claiming to be in the know” as sources.
A total electricity breakdown on Monday underscored the parlous state of Cuba’s economy. The country lost Venezuela as its chief regional ally and oil supplier in January after a US military operation toppled deposed Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.
Power was restored to two-thirds of the country early on Tuesday, including to 45 percent of the capital, Havana, home to 1.7 million people.
“What we fear all the time is that the blackout will drag on and we will lose the little bit that we have in the fridge, because everything is so expensive,” said Olga Suarez, a 64-year-old retiree. “Otherwise we are used to it because here almost all the time you go to bed and wake up without electricity.”
Adding another scare, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck off Cuba’s coast early on Tuesday. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
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