WASHINGTON (EFE).— US President Donald Trump insisted yesterday that Washington is holding negotiations with the Cuban government to end the oil embargo on the island and that he believes they are “close” to reaching an agreement that allows Cubans in the United States to visit their country again.
“Many (Cubans) would like to at least visit their relatives, and I think we are close to achieving it. The fact is that we are negotiating with the Cuban leaders at this moment,” he told the media in the Oval Office yesterday Monday.
Trump also assured again that “Mexico will stop sending them oil,” at a time when President Sheinbaum has said that she will maintain shipments of material aid for humanitarian reasons to Cuba while she seeks “through all diplomatic channels” how to resume fuel shipments.
“I would like to help the Cubans who are here. As you know, we have many people who came from Cuba, who were expelled from Cuba, who fled Cuba. They arrived on rafts. They crossed shark-infested waters. I don’t know how they did it. And that was many years ago. Many would like to return,” he added.
Trump had assured over the weekend that Cuban authorities would be forced to seek an agreement due to the lack of oil.
Despite Trump’s insistence, yesterday Cuban Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío stated in an interview that the Cuban government had not yet held any dialogue table with the United States, but that they were willing to discuss “the differences.”
crossed sayings
While Pope Leo XIV calls for dialogue, Trump assures that they are negotiating and Havana emphasizes that it is willing to maintain contacts on the basis of non-interference, the crossed versions have generated uncertainty about the state of relations.
Secrecy in bilateral talks is not new. It has been the usual practice between the governments of Cuba and the United States, maintaining contacts despite—or perhaps because of—recurrent escalations.
Meanwhile, Cuban media in Miami and social networks are buzzing with rumors about possible bilateral negotiations, providing details of alleged participants in those conversations and points on the agenda, although nothing was officially confirmed.
One of the points that is repeated is that this dialogue would be taking place in Mexico, something in line with the offer made in mid-January by President Sheinbaum, one of the few hemispheric allies that Cuba has left.
The Vatican has traditionally been another mediator between Havana and Washington. The last occasion was in 2024, during Joe Biden’s mandate, when the United States temporarily removed Cuba from the list of countries that promote terrorism in exchange for the release of 553 prisoners.
Havana and Washington have negotiated on multiple occasions since the triumph of the Cuban revolution in 1959, reaching agreements mainly on regional security and migration.
They have also sometimes included the political and economic, such as the talks that, with the mediation of the Vatican and Canada, led in 2014 to the bilateral “thaw” under the mandates of Obama and Raúl Castro.
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