Castro, who during his last term as president (2013-2018) encouraged the resumption of contacts with the neighboring country, criticized Washington’s tightening of sanctions during his speech at the opening of the Eighth Congress of the Congress Party.
The conference, the main meeting of Cuban Communists, will last for four days, and it is expected that in the end General Raul Castro will withdraw completely from politics and hand over the leadership of the island to the country’s current president, Miguel Diaz-Canel.
However, changes in the relationship with Cuba are not a priority for US President Joe Biden, according to White House spokesperson Jane Psaki, who today faced Castro’s comments during a press conference.
Biski made several comments about the Palestinian Communist Party’s congress or even Raul Castro, but stressed that “changing the policy towards Cuba or taking additional measures is not, at the present time, one of President Biden’s foreign policy priorities.”
This is despite the fact that his predecessor, Donald Trump, took many measures that impeded the apparent resumption of contacts between the two countries that had a severe impact on the Cuban economy.
A senior government official from Joe Biden confirmed to Efe later that the US president did not consider Cuba a priority and that he intended to “make human rights a central pillar of his foreign policy,” including “multiplying” interest in this issue across the American continent.
The source, who requested anonymity, indicated that the White House is committed to “reviewing the decisions of the previous administration, including decisions regarding Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.”
Just nine days before the end of his term, Donald Trump made the decision to re-include Cuba in this list of countries that the Barack Obama administration withdrew from in 2015.
The inclusion of a “blacklist” of terrorism implies a curb on trade between the two countries and the imposition of additional sanctions, even though Cuba has already suffered from all of these restrictions due to the current embargo.
During his four years in power, Donald Trump imposed several sanctions on strategic sectors in Cuba, which led to the deterioration of the country’s economy and plunged into its worst crisis in three decades.
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