Radio Cadena Agramonte emisiora de Camagüey
México City, May 12th. - Cuba is ready to have a constructive and respectful relationship with the United States, and we see no reason why the current president, Donald Trump, would be opposed to doing so, said Vice Chancellor Carlos Fernández de Cossío.
In an interview broadcast last night on channel 14 of Mexican television, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs pointed out that, of course, he would have to recognize that Cuba is a sovereign state, which is attended by rights and prerogatives of self-determination.
If the United States were only able to do that, I think there may be a relationship, and if I was able to direct interests I would say strategic and that they really concern the whole of the American Union, to American society, to U.S. society," he said.
He alluded to the existence of people who have made a political career and enriched themselves with the business of hostility against the island, but it does not necessarily represent the feeling of the Cuban community there, nor of the majority of American society.
The vice-chancellor was convinced that if the majority of the people of that American nation were duly informed and fully aware of the nature of the country's government's policy against Cuba, the damage it causes to the population, it would openly oppose it.
Regarding the Trump administration's position on the island, he pointed to the presence of a great influence of anti-Cuban sectors, and although there has been no open, declared pronouncement, they have already taken action.
Among these, in addition to the fierce maintenance of the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by Washington, is the re-inclusion of the largest Antilles in the unilateral list of states that supposedly sponsor terrorism.
At another point in the conversation, Fernández de Cossío mentioned the aggressiveness against the island by the current US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.
"We don't know what he can think, we don't really know what degree of authority he has in government, or how he would respond to a decision of the president regarding our country," he said.
But Cuba has no limitation on interacting with whoever the representative of the U.S. government is, as long as it is a dialogue, a respectful exchange in which we clearly put our positions on.
He reaffirmed that his country does not ask for money from the United States, no soft credits, no donations, no preferential trade treatment, but something very simple.
Let us be treated as what we are, which is a fully sovereign state, with the ability and determination to build its own future in the way you understand it, not in the way the rulers of the United States understand it," he emphasized.
That's not much to ask, he said, and that's how Cuba relates to the rest of the world, the exception is the United States. (PL) (Photo: Cubadebate)
