HAVANA, Feb 2 (Reuters) – Cuba and the United States are in communication, a Cuban diplomat told Reuters on Monday, although he said that the exchanges have not yet evolved into a formal “dialogue.”
Carlos Fernández de Cossío, Cuba’s deputy foreign minister, told Reuters that the US government was aware that Cuba was “ready for a serious, meaningful and responsible dialogue.”
“We had an exchange of messages, we have embassies, we had communications, but we cannot say that we had a dialogue table,” Cossío told Reuters in an interview at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building in Havana.
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Cossío’s statements this Monday represent Cuba’s first indication that the two sides are in talks, albeit on a limited basis, following tensions that arose in January between the two countries following the US capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, long a close ally of Cuba.
US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the United States had begun talks with “the most important people in Cuba,” days after declaring Cuba “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security and threatening tariffs on exports to the US from any nation that sent oil to the communist island.
“I think we’re going to make a deal with Cuba,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Sunday.
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Cuba had previously denied any negotiations with the United States.
Friction has increased in recent weeks, as the US began blocking all oil arriving in Cuba, including that coming from ally Venezuela, raising food and transport prices and causing severe fuel shortages and hours of blackouts, even in the capital Havana.
Trump said this Monday that Mexico would stop sending oil to Cuba, intensifying the pressure campaign on the Caribbean nation.
Cossío said he expects U.S. pressure to halt fuel exports to Cuba will ultimately backfire.
“The US… is trying to force all countries in the world not to supply fuel to Cuba. Can this be sustainable in the long term?” Cossío asked Reuters. “Will all countries in the world accept the US telling them who they can export their national products to?”
The two neighboring countries have been at loggerheads since former leader Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, but a devastating economic crisis on the island and mounting pressure from the Trump administration have brought the conflict to a critical point recently.
