Cuban diplomat denies that releasing political prisoners is part of US negotiations

Ha­vana will not abide by any Amer­i­can “ul­ti­ma­tums” to re­lease po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers as part of new talks, a Cuban diplo­mat said Thurs­day, while as­sert­ing that lead­ers are “prepar­ing for all sce­nar­ios” if U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump makes good on threats to in­ter­vene in the is­land na­tion.

In an in­ter­view with The As­so­ci­at­ed Press, Cuban Am­bas­sador to the U.N. Ernesto Soberón Guzmán said in­ter­nal is­sues re­gard­ing de­tainees “are not on the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble.” The re­lease of po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers was a key U.S. de­mand as the long­time ad­ver­saries held dis­cus­sions in Cu­ba this month for the first time in a decade.

“We have our le­gal sys­tem, like here in the U.S., they have their le­gal sys­tem,” he said. “So we have to re­spect both of our in­ter­nal af­fairs.”

An Amer­i­can del­e­ga­tion ar­rived for se­cret meet­ings in Ha­vana on April 10 in a diplo­mat­ic push to urge Cu­ba to make ma­jor changes to its econ­o­my and po­lit­i­cal gov­er­nance or face con­tin­ued eco­nom­ic pres­sure and po­ten­tial­ly risk U.S. mil­i­tary es­ca­la­tion. Nei­ther side has named who took part, but Guzmán said it was at the un­der­sec­re­tary of state lev­el for the Amer­i­cans and deputy for­eign min­is­ter lev­el for the Cubans.

De­spite the re­cent re­vival in diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions, ten­sions be­tween the two coun­tries have steadi­ly in­creased in the last few months over a U.S. en­er­gy block­ade that has fur­ther strained eco­nom­ic and oth­er crises in the Caribbean coun­try.

Trump has threat­ened tar­iffs on any coun­try that sells or sup­plies oil to Cu­ba and said the U.S. might have “the ho­n­our of tak­ing Cu­ba” fol­low­ing mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in Venezuela and Iran. The State De­part­ment did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to re­quests for com­ment on Guzmán’s re­marks.

The block­ade, cou­pled with the is­land’s se­vere wa­ter and pow­er short­ages, has deep­ened pover­ty and in­creased hunger across Cu­ba as se­vere black­outs per­sist.

In late March, a Russ­ian tanker car­ry­ing 730,000 bar­rels be­came the first fu­el ship­ment Cu­ba had re­ceived in three months. Guzmán said that the ship­ment has been able to ful­fil on­ly a frac­tion of what the coun­try needs to op­er­ate.

Oth­er con­cerns the U.S. raised dur­ing the meet­ing this month cen­tred on the in­flu­ence of for­eign pow­ers on the is­land, the AP has re­port­ed. The Amer­i­cans al­so dis­cussed pro­pos­als to com­pen­sate hun­dreds of thou­sands of le­gal claims by Cuban Amer­i­cans whose homes, busi­ness­es and land were seized af­ter rev­o­lu­tion­ary leader Fi­del Cas­tro took pow­er in 1959.

Guzmán con­firmed that such com­pen­sa­tion was among the top­ics at the meet­ing and that Ha­vana is re­cep­tive to it. But, he added, that it could on­ly hap­pen in con­junc­tion with rec­i­p­ro­cal eco­nom­ic re­lief for the decades­long eco­nom­ic em­bar­go against Cu­ba.

“There is not on­ly this claim but al­so the claim from our side be­cause the em­bar­go has an eco­nom­ic im­pact,” he said. “This is a high­way with two di­rec­tions.”

Asked whether Cuban of­fi­cials can trust diplo­mat­ic ef­forts amid U.S. threats, Guzmán said that while they are op­ti­mistic about cre­at­ing a “new ap­proach” to U.S.-Cuban re­la­tions, the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s for­eign pol­i­cy ap­proach in the last year has put them on high alert.

“We have been see­ing what is hap­pen­ing all around the world, in our re­gion, in the Mid­dle East, so we are not a naive per­son,” he said. “We are prepar­ing for all the sce­nar­ios. And I in­sist, our first op­tion — what we re­al­ly want — is a suc­cess­ful di­a­logue with the U.S. gov­ern­ment.”

But, he added, if U.S. mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion were to hap­pen, “we are ready to fight back.” —UNIT­ED NA­TIONS (AP)

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Sto­ry by FARNOUSH AMIRI | As­so­ci­at­ed Press