Cuba braces for US to cut diplomatic ties under Trump

Cuba is bracing for the possibility of the US breaking off diplomatic ties but will seek to maintain them nonetheless.

Cuba's former president Raul Castro, right, Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro and Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel attend the closing ceremony of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) summit in Havana at the weekend. Picture: AP

Cuba is bracing for the possibility of the US breaking off diplomatic ties but will seek to maintain them nonetheless, says Havana’s top diplomat in charge of relations with Washington.

“We must be aware this can get worse,” said Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, summing up months of mounting tension between the two countries.

The reason for the downturn in relations — five years after a historic thaw between the Cold War foes — is simple, he said.

“Those in charge of US policy towards the western hemisphere have attitudes and positions that are extremely aggressive towards our country,” said Mr Fernandez de Cossio, director-general of the US desk at Cuba’s foreign ministry. “We are seeing that what they want to do is to break all the existing links, to close the embassies.

“We hope this won’t be the case but we cannot trust that this will not happen. We are prepared, ready for such an eventuality, but we do not wish it.”

The embassies were reopened in 2015, months after US president Barack Obama and Raul Castro agreed to revive diplomatic ties severed since 1961.

It was a shining moment that drew a line under nearly six decades of Cold War rivalry, and promised a new era of openness.

“It was an emotional moment for the Cuban people,” said Mr Fernandez de Cossio, recalling the hope that prevailed in his country at the time. Five years on, he has mixed feelings about the progress made. The first two years were unremittingly positive: travel and trade restrictions were eased, a direct telephone link was restored, and Mr Obama visited Havana.

It all changed with the arrival of President Donald Trump in the White House. “In the last three years, there has been a gradual erosion (of the relationship) until the current moment when the US government is clearly declaring its aggressive intent towards Cuba,” Mr Fernandez de Cossio said.

As long as Washington maintains an economic embargo, which Mr Obama failed to lift during his presidency, “it’s very difficult to think seriously about sustainable progress in the bilateral relationship”.

“It’s at a very low point,” he said, citing the “drastic” US measure of depriving 11 million Cubans of fuel by targeting shipments from ally Venezuela with sanctions. He also pointed to Washington’s criticism of Cuba’s foreign medical aid program under which it sends thousands of doctors abroad. That criticism, he says, “is an extreme which no American government has ever reached before”.

The US has focused its ire on Cuba over two issues: its human rights record and support for socialist Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Mr Fernandez de Cossio dismissed the human rights criticism as “a pretext, totally hypocritical” given that Washington sponsors “the most brutal regimes on the planet”.

Cuba has always refuted the existence of political prisoners on its soil, estimated at about 100 by various NGOs. “Anyone who says or thinks Cuba supports the Venezuelan government is absolutely right,” he said, as the two countries are long-time allies, but it was wrong to say Cuba had a military contingent of 25,000 soldiers in Venezuela” — dismissing a US assertion about the extent of its military involvement in the country.

AP