By Daniel Trotta and Dave Sherwood
HAVANA, March 13 (Reuters) – Cuban officials have opened talks with the U.S. government, President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on Friday, amid a severe economic crisis and as the Communist government has come under increasing pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump.
“These talks have been aimed at finding solutions through dialogue to the bilateral differences we have between the two nations,” Diaz-Canel said in a video aired on state television shortly before he was scheduled to address Cuban media.
The media address was billed as a continuation of a February 5 event when Diaz-Canel warned that Cuba was approaching a situation that would require “extreme measures” given the economic crisis, frequent power blackouts and fuel shortages exacerbated by Trump’s imposition of an oil blockade on the Caribbean island.
Diaz-Canel said he had directed the talks for the Cuban side, together with former Cuban President Raul Castro and other high-level Communist Party and government officials. He did not say who had attended for the United States.
Trump has said repeatedly that the United States was already in high-level talks with Cuban representatives. Until now, the Cuban government had denied that any official encounters are underway but had not explicitly denied media reports of back-channel discussions with Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, the grandson of Raul Castro, who is 94 and still wields great influence.
Rodriguez Castro was seated behind Diaz-Canel and among the Communist Party officials pictured in the video.
Since the U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and removed from power Cuba’s most important foreign benefactor in January, Trump has cut off Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba and threatened to slap tariffs on any country that sells oil to Cuba.
Trump in recent weeks had made a series of statements, saying Cuba was on the verge of collapse or eager to make a deal with the United States. On Monday he said Cuba may be subject to a “friendly takeover,” then added, “it may not be a friendly takeover.”
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta and Dave Sherwood in Havana; Editing by Lincoln Feast.and Chizu Nomiyama)
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