CIA director John Ratcliffe met Cuban officials in Havana on Thursday as a way to improve dialogue between the US and the communist-run island, the Cuban government said.
The meeting took place “in a context marked by the complexity of bilateral relations, with the aim of contributing to the political dialogue between both nations”, a statement said.
The CIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
The meeting took place a day after protests erupted across Havana following an announcement from Cuba’s energy minister that the country had completely run out of diesel and fuel oil amid a US blockade that has strangled the island’s energy imports.
“We have absolutely no fuel [oil] and absolutely no diesel,” the energy minister, Vicente de la O Levy, said on Wednesday on state media, adding that the national grid was in a “critical” state, and admitting “we have no reserves”. Fuel oil is a product derived from crude oil distillation used to generate heat or power.
Residents took to the city’s streets late on Wednesday shouting “turn on the lights”, banging pots and pans, and setting fire to piles of rubbish to express their misery in the face of blackouts which can last 22 hours or more.
The statement on Thursday said exchanges with the US “made it possible to demonstrate categorically that Cuba does not constitute a threat to US national security, nor are there any legitimate reasons to include it on the list of countries that allegedly sponsor terrorism”.
Havana “has never supported any hostile activity against the United States, nor will it permit actions against any other nation to be carried out from Cuba”, the statement emphasised, referring to allegations of a Chinese presence.
US-Cuba relations have deteriorated significantly. Washington imposed the fuel blockade in January, and President Donald Trump has slapped sanctions on the island and mused about taking it over.
Conditions on the island were poor even before Wednesday’s announcement about the fuel supply, with regular power outages and supply shortages becoming the norm.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio has renewed an offer of $100m (£74.6m) in aid on the condition that the assistance be distributed by the Catholic church, bypassing the government.
In a post on X, Cuba’s president Miguel Diaz-Canel urged the US to lift its blockade instead.
“The damage could be eased in a much simpler and faster way by lifting or relaxing the blockade, since it is known that the humanitarian situation is coldly calculated and induced,” he said.
But, if Washington showed “true willingness” to provide aid, he added, “it will encounter no obstacles or ingratitude from Cuba”.
Despite tensions, intergovernmental talks are ongoing, with a high-level diplomatic meeting taking place in Havana on 10 April – the first time a US government plane had landed in the Cuban capital since 2016.
With Agence France-Presse
