Cuba ‘ready’ if US chooses to cut diplomatic ties

The Cuban government says it is ready for a potential move by the United States to sever diplomatic relations with Havana.

“There are powerful people today in the US government that want to increasingly apply hostile measures and sever our bilateral relationship,” Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, the Cuban Foreign Ministry’s general director for US affairs, told reporters on the sidelines of an annual US-Cuban academic conference in the capital, Havana, on Monday. “If that were to be the case, we are ready to face that reality, but it is not what the people of Cuba want and not what the government of Cuba is seeking.”

The senior Cuban official also stressed that maintaining bilateral ties was in the interest of the majority of Americans.

The US and Cuba severed relations in 1961 during the Cold War, two years after the two countries became ideological foes following  the Cuban Revolution that brought the late Fidel Castro to power.

In 2015, the US administration, under former president Barack Obama, restored diplomatic relations with Cuba and partially ended the 60-year US economic blockade against the island country. However, his successor, Donald Trump, began to roll back the historic rapprochement as soon as he took office in early 2017.

US hits Cuba with new sanctions over Venezuela

The United States says it is imposing new sanctions on Cuba over its support for the Venezuelan government.

Trump has tightened the decades-old US trade sanctions on Cuba over the past few years in a renewed attempt to force the country to “reform.”

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