President Donald Trump said his administration is seeking “a fundamental change in the situation in Cuba,” which he described as “an absolutely failed state” that “will fall” during a speech Tuesday at a United Nations gathering of world leaders in New York.
Trump said Cuba is “under great pressure, the biggest pressure they’ve ever been under,” and is “failing,” in a speech to dignitaries attending the high-level week of the UN General Assembly. He said Secretary of State Marco Rubio was handling negotiations with Havana.
“He’s deep into negotiations with Cuba. Let’s see what happens. We will not allow a haven for foreign adversaries to threaten America on our own doorstep, right at our doorstep,” he said. Cuban diplomats present at the assembly then walked out of the room.
Citing a recent State Department report, Trump also accused Cuba of spending decades coordinating with left-wing radicals and communist networks in the United States.
“As our State Department has detailed, they’ve cultivated ties to subversive and radical groups such as the Communist Party USA, Antifa, and the Democratic Socialists of America,” he said. “Communism will never be coming to America, but freedom will be coming to Cuba.”
This is the first time in recent weeks that Trump has mentioned Cuba in a public appearance, which had become a common theme earlier this year, when he repeatedly spoke of “taking Cuba” and that the Cuban communist government would soon fall.
Since the beginning of the year, his administration has slapped sanctions regularly on Cuban officials, government enterprises and military companies and has cut off oil supplies to the Cuban government. At the same time, Rubio engaged in negotiations with Raúl Castro’s grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro. CIA director John Ratcliffe traveled to the island in May to pressure the island’s leaders to accept Trump’s negotiation offer.
But Cuban leaders have dug in, resisting political concessions and launching limited economic reforms to cope with the country’s economic devastation. The Miami Herald recently reported on how an early deal proposal involving U.S. energy investment on the island did not come to fruition because of Havana’s hesitation and opposition in Miami.
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Miguel Díaz-Canel, the country’s handpicked president who is himself under U.S. sanctions, quickly reacted to Trump’s speech on X.
“Unable to justify the punishment inflicted upon the people of Cuba and its genocidal economic war, the U.S. President repeats at the UN that Cuba poses a threat,” he said. “Lies are the recourse of those who refuse to accept the Cuban people’s right to self-determination.”
Díaz-Canel skipped the General Assembly, but sent a delegation led by the country’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez. Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, the deputy foreign minister, who is also in New York for the gathering, told PBS last week that his government sees no progress in talks with the United States and accused the administration of committing an “international crime” by blocking oil supplies.
He said Cuban leaders would commit “treason” if they decide to go along with U.S. demands about “how they want to organize our country.” Instead, the Cuban government has decided on a familiar path: “We will have to cope ourselves. And to some extent, the international community perhaps would say, this is unacceptable for one superpower to be dictating what everybody has to do.”
During the speech, Trump also highlighted the U.S. capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, a massive oil deal signed with his successor, interim president Delcy Rodriguez, who was also in the room, and the controversial military strikes at sea against suspected drug traffickers.
“We are reasserting American power,” he said, “including American military power, where necessary, in our region and around the world to create a safer future for all of us.”
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