Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel Warns that the US Will Face Great Resistance If It Attempts to Take Over the Island State.
This is in a post on the social media X.
- Faced with the worst-case scenario, Cuba has one guarantee: any external aggressor will face unbreakable resistance, the president writes.
He does not immediately elaborate on what such resistance will consist of exactly.
The Cuban government is under massive pressure from the US. Among other things, the US government has imposed a blockade on Venezuela's oil supplies to Cuba.
At the same time, US President Donald Trump has said that he believes he will have the "honor of taking Cuba" and that he would like to see a regime change in Cuba.
The communist authorities in Cuba have been on the opposite side of the United States for seven decades. The poor island state has close ties to Russia, among other things.
According to the AFP news agency, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that a decision by Cuba to allow Cuban exiles to invest and own businesses is not enough in the eyes of the United States.
It will therefore not be sufficient to enable the reforms that the Trump administration is demanding of Cuba.
- It is not going to solve it. So they have some big decisions to make, Rubio, who is Cuban-American, told reporters at the White House.
Cuba is open to broad negotiations with Washington and to allowing more investment - but the country will not discuss changes to its political system, Tanieris Dieguez, Cuba's deputy ambassador in Washington D.C., told AFP.
The two countries "have a lot to put on the table," she says.
Neither should ask the other to change its government, she says.
- Nothing that concerns our political system, nothing that has to do with our political model, our constitutional model, is part of the negotiations, and it never will be, she says.
- The only thing Cuba asks for in any conversation is respect for our sovereignty and our right to self-determination.
The New York Times, citing anonymous US officials, has reported that the Trump administration has called on Cuba to dismiss Miguel Díaz-Canel, who is seen as resistant to change.
Marco Rubio, however, has denied that report.
On X he writes that the article is false and an example of a story based on sources who are "fraudsters and liars who claim to know".
/ritzau/AFP
