Cuban Envoy Says Current Leaders Will Remain Despite US Pressure

Removing Miguel Diaz-Canel as president of Cuba to appease the US is out of the question, the country’s ambassador to the United Nations said, adding that talks between the two countries should be based on “mutual respect.”

Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, Havana’s envoy in New York, told Bloomberg This Weekend Anchor David Gura the Caribbean nation isn’t willing to change its system of government despite a de facto oil blockade that’s left it struggling to provide basic services.

“Friendly takeover, regime change, the removal of the president,” Soberón Guzmán said Thursday, “are completely out of any dialogue.”

The diplomat added that if President Donald Trump follows through on his threats to move against the communist-run country 90 miles off the coast of Florida it will fiercely resist.

“If someone tries to invade Cuba or if someone tries to make an aggression to Cuba, they will find a whole people — 10 million people — ready to defend our sovereignty, our independence, without taking into account the cost,” Soberón Guzmán said.

Trump, emboldened by the raid on Venezuela that captured Cuba’s principal ally in January, has repeatedly warned the leadership in Havana they could be next, arguing that the country’s one-party regime is on the brink of collapse. “Free it, take it — I can do anything I want,” the US president said of the island on Monday. 

A day later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said negotiations between the two countries would go nowhere unless Cuba puts “new people in charge.”

Havana’s leaders, however, believe they can avoid the same fate as Nicolás Maduro, who was whisked away from Caracas by US commandos on Jan. 3. “I lost the count of how many presidents of the US tried to change the the government in Cuba,” Soberón Guzmán said. “And we are still here.”

Since confirming for the first time a week ago that talks with the US are taking place, Cuba’s government released a small number of political prisoners and offered to open up its economy to investment from Cubans living abroad. But Rubio criticized the move Tuesday as “not dramatic enough.”

Conditions on the island are bleak after years of tough US sanctions, which have only gotten worse under Trump. Squeezed of fuel, supplies and funding, Cuba’s economy is in free-fall and its electric grid extremely fragile. The nation suffered a national blackout this week, at least its sixth in the span of about a year.

The electricity shortage has caused thousands of surgeries to be postponed and cut off pregnant women from basic health services, Soberón Guzmán said. But he pledged his country would work through such challenges before ceding to the US.

“We are ready to to to face a situation like this for a long, long time,” he said. “We are resilient people.”

Under US pressure, the island is also becoming increasingly isolated. Ecuador and Costa Rica recently severed diplomatic relations with the island, while a number of other Latin American and Caribbean countries have ended their use of Cuban doctors — a key source of revenue for the cash-strapped government in Havana. 

Soberón Guzmán, however, insisted that Cuba is not alone. “As an ambassador at the UN, I can tell you that we count with the support of the majority of the countries,” he said.

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