Cuba confirms ‘communications’ with US as Trump moves to block oil

Cuba and the United States ‍are in communication, a Cuban diplomat said on Monday, although he said the exchanges have not yet evolved into a formal “dialogue”.

Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, Cuba’s deputy foreign minister, told Reuters the US government was aware that Cuba was “ready to have a serious, meaningful and responsible ⁠dialogue”.

“We have had exchange of messages, we have embassies, we have had communications, but we cannot say we have had a table of dialogue,” de Cossio told Reuters in an interview at the Foreign Ministry building in Havana.

De Cossio’s statements on Monday represent the first hint from Cuba that the two sides are in conversation, even if ‍in a limited fashion, after tensions flared in January between the two countries following the US capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas ‍Maduro, long a close ally of Cuba.

US President Donald Trump on Sunday said the United States had begun talks with “the highest people in Cuba”, days after declaring Cuba “an unusual ‌and extraordinary threat” to US national security and threatening tariffs on the US-bound exports of any nation that sends oil to ‍the communist-run island.