HAVANA — Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said Monday that his administration is not in talks with the U.S. government, a day after President Donald Trump threatened the Caribbean island in the wake of the U.S. attack on Venezuela.
Díaz-Canel posted a flurry of brief statements on X after Trump suggested that Cuba ''make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.'' He did not say what kind of deal.
Díaz-Canel wrote that for ''relations between the U.S. and Cuba to progress, they must be based on international law rather than hostility, threats, and economic coercion.''
He added: ''We have always been willing to hold a serious and responsible dialogue with the various US governments, including the current one, on the basis of sovereign equality, mutual respect, principles of International Law, and mutual benefit without interference in internal affairs and with full respect for our independence."
His statements were reposted by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez on X.
On Sunday, Trump wrote that Cuba would no longer live off oil and money from Venezuela, which the U.S. attacked on Jan. 3 in a stunning operation that killed 32 Cuban officers and led to the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro.
Cuba was receiving an estimated 35,000 barrels a day from Venezuela before the U.S. attacked, along with some 5,500 barrels daily from Mexico and roughly 7,500 from Russia, according to Jorge Piñón of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, who tracks the shipments.
Even with oil shipments from Venezuela, widespread blackouts have persisted across Cuba given fuel shortages and a crumbling electric grid. Experts worry a lack of petroleum would only deepen the island's multiple crises.
