A prime official within the Cuban authorities has denied “categorically” that Havana is negotiating with the US over the destiny of its president, Miguel Diaz-Canel.
On Friday, Vice Overseas Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio instructed a information convention that shake-ups within the authorities weren’t up for dialogue.
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“The political system of Cuba shouldn’t be up for negotiation, and naturally neither the president nor the place of any official in Cuba is topic to negotiation with the US,” Fernandez de Cossio stated.
His remarks have been a agency repudiation of studies that the administration of United States President Donald Trump was searching for the removing of Diaz-Canel.
The New York Instances reported earlier this week that, whereas Trump is pushing for Diaz-Canel’s ouster, he’s not searching for the dismantlement of different components of the Cuban authorities.
The plan can be much like what Trump carried out in Venezuela after his January 3 assault to abduct and imprison Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. That manoeuvre left intact the remainder of Maduro’s authorities.
Critics level out, nonetheless, that finishing up such a plan in Cuba would go away the household of longtime chief Fidel Castro in positions of energy — and it might cease wanting dismantling a authorities lengthy accused of violent repression towards its folks.
Diaz-Canel is the primary president in Cuba to not be part of the Castro household since 1976.
Fidel Castro led the nation from the time of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 till 2008, and his brother Raul Castro succeeded him as president from 2008 to 2018.
Based on a constitutional reform set in 2019, presidents in Cuba serve five-year phrases, which implies Diaz-Canel will attain the tip of his second time period in 2028.
Diaz-Canel additionally serves as the top of the island’s Communist Get together, a place he assumed in 2021. That, too, has a five-year time period.
However Trump has repeatedly indicated he want to see Cuba’s communist management fall shortly, and he has carried out a sequence of measures to weaken the federal government.
On January 11, Trump introduced that Venezuela, a detailed regional ally of Cuba, would now not alternate oil or funds with the island.
Then, on January 29, Trump issued an govt order labelling Cuba an “uncommon and extraordinary menace” to the US.
To deal with the “nationwide emergency”, Trump pledged to impose steep import taxes on any nation that despatched oil to Cuba, successfully putting the island below a gas blockade.
Cuba’s ageing power grid depends on fossil fuels to supply the nation with electrical energy. This week, after practically six weeks with out oil imports, Cuba briefly discovered itself within the grips of an islandwide blackout, affecting practically 10 million folks.
The United Nations has warned of humanitarian “collapse” on the island, as situations worsen.
Already, Cuba has been below a complete commerce embargo from the US for the reason that Chilly Warfare within the Nineteen Sixties.
With the US solely about 145 kilometres (90 miles) away, critics have blamed the embargo for destabilising the island’s financial system, along with authorities mismanagement.
Whereas tensions between the US and Cuba briefly eased in 2016, Trump took workplace for his first time period the next 12 months, and he reimposed US restrictions on journey and commerce that had been briefly lifted.
He has continued that “most strain” marketing campaign into his second time period, which started in January 2025. The Cuban authorities has acknowledged it’s in talks with the Trump administration to raise the present gas blockade.
Trump, in the meantime, has floated the concept of main a “pleasant takeover” of Cuba, describing its authorities as being “in its final moments of life“.
“I do consider I’ll be the honour [sic], having the honour of taking Cuba. That’d be good. It’s an enormous honour,” Trump stated on Monday from the Oval Workplace.
“Whether or not I free it, take it, I feel I might do something I would like with it, if you wish to know the reality. They’re a really weakened nation proper now.”
Authorized specialists, nonetheless, have warned that such threats quantity to a violation of Cuban sovereignty.
In his remarks on Friday, Fernandez de Cossio did say that Cuba was keen to barter with the US in areas like commerce.
He famous that Cuba is searching for compensation for damages wrought by the US embargo, and that there are 5,913 claims from the US for property nationalised through the Cuban Revolution.
“These are very complicated points that may be mentioned, however they require dialogue,” Fernandez de Cossio stated. “They require sitting down and are professional issues.”
