WASHINGTON — Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel confirmed Friday that his government is in talks with the US — after President Trump floated a “friendly takeover” of the Communist island.
“These talks have been aimed at finding solutions through dialogue to the bilateral differences we have between the two nations,” Díaz-Canel said in a televised statement. “International factors that have facilitated these exchanges.”
He added that the talks are being conducted “on the basis of equality and respect for both countries’ political systems, sovereignty, and self-determination of our governments.”
At a subsequent press conference, Díaz-Canel, 65, said no fuel has entered the country in three months, making its electrical grid “unstable,” Reuters reported.
Shortly before the remarks, the Cuban government freed 51 political prisoners in a conciliatory gesture.
Trump cut off discounted Venezuelan oil shipments to the island after his Jan. 3 raid on Caracas that toppled Havana’s socialist ally, Nicolás Maduro. Trump also threatened to impose tariffs on any country that sells oil to Cuba.
“It may be a friendly takeover. It may not be a friendly takeover,” Trump said Monday. “It wouldn’t matter because they’re really in — they’re down to, as they say, fumes. They have no energy. They have no money. They’re in deep trouble on a humanitarian basis.”
The US president made similar remarks last month, saying: “We could very well end up having a friendly takeover of Cuba after many, many years.”
Trump also said such a “takeover” would be “very positive for the people that were expelled, or worse, from Cuba that live here” in America, and that “it’s really right now a nation in deep trouble, and they want our help.”
Cuba’s state-run economy has struggled for decades, but is in an increasingly desperate position since Trump swapped out Maduro for his vice president, Delcy Rodriguez — who has complied with US oil dictates.
Díaz-Canel’s statement followed several indicators that discussions were in progress.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio met on Feb. 25 with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro — the 41-year-old grandson of Cuba’s former leader Raúl Castro, 94, who handed the presidency to Díaz-Canel in 2019 — during a Caribbean nation conference on the island of St. Kitts.
The Treasury Department said the same day it would allow the sale of Venezuelan oil to Cuba, but only if it benefited the private sector, which would require internal reforms weakening the Communist Party’s power.
Cuba has been a single-party state for more than six decades — and was ruled for most of that time by Fidel Castro, who overthrew a corrupt US-backed government in 1959 before declaring a socialist state, jailing dissidents, and expropriating American assets.
Castro yielded power to his brother Raúl in 2008, dying eight years later at the age of 90.
