Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on Thursday that he will not resign under US pressure. He also called for open dialogue in his first television interview with an American broadcaster.
“We have a free sovereign state, a free state. We have self-determination and independence, and we are not subjected to the designs of the United States,” Diaz-Canel told NBC News, according to their translation of his remarks.
“The US government that has implemented that hostile policy against Cuba has no moral to demand anything from Cuba,” the 65-year-old leader said.
He added, “The concept of revolutionaries giving up and stepping down — it’s not part of our vocabulary.”
Washington has been running a pressure campaign on communist-ruled Cuba. It has imposed what amounts to a virtual oil blockade on the island. The US has threatened tariffs against any country that tries to sell oil to Cuba.
Cuba has faced an energy crisis since January. Its main supply from Venezuela stopped after the ouster of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.
The island has lived under a US trade embargo for more than six decades.
US President Donald Trump has openly suggested the idea of “taking” Cuba, along with Greenland, Canada and Venezuela. His administration also describes Havana’s leadership as a “threat” to US national security.
Diaz-Canel last month pledged “unbreakable resistance” to any such move.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has Cuban roots, has led talks with Havana. He has called for major changes in Cuba’s leadership, which he labels incompetent. However, Rubio denies demanding Diaz-Canel’s resignation.
Diaz-Canel told NBC that Cuba wants “to engage in dialogue and discuss any topic without any condition.” He added that talks should not require political change in Cuba, just as Cuba does not demand changes in the US system.
Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister Josefina Vidal told AFP on Tuesday that talks with the United States remain in a “very preliminary, very initial phase”.
Despite tensions, the US recently allowed a shipment of crude oil from a Russian tanker to be unloaded in Cuba.
