WASHINGTON (AP) — The highest U.S. commander in Latin America met with Cuban army leaders Friday in a “transient alternate on operational safety issues” close to the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, the most recent official to go to the island nation as President Donald Trump ramps up stress on its leaders.
Trump has warned that Cuba “is subsequent” after U.S. army forces captured Venezuela’s autocratic chief, Nicolás Maduro, in a January raid. Within the months since, the Trump administration has imposed an oil blockade on Cuba, maintained warships within the Caribbean Sea and indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro on federal costs.
Gen. Francis Donovan, head of U.S. Southern Command, met with Lt. Gen. Roberto Legrá Sotolongo and different Cuban army officers.
Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces stated in an announcement that each side considered “the assembly positively as a result of it addressed safety points alongside the perimeter separating the army enclave, and so they agreed to keep up communication between the 2 army instructions.”
Prime Trump aides, together with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA chief John Ratcliffe, even have met with Cuban officers to discover potential enhancements in relations. However the U.S. facet has come away unimpressed from these talks, resulting in much more sanctions imposed on the Cuban authorities.
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Moreover the assembly, Donovan additionally assessed the safety of the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay and mentioned the “security of service members and their households, and operational readiness with base officers,” U.S. Southern Command stated in a submit on X.
The U.S. maintains the bottom regardless of many years of friction with Cuba’s socialist leaders, whom Trump desires faraway from energy.
The U.S. army has a handful of Navy ships, together with not less than one amphibious assault ship, within the Caribbean, a a lot smaller power than was current on the time of the Maduro raid.
On Friday, the Pentagon introduced {that a} new unit of 1,300 sailors and Marines can be changing the twenty second Marine Expeditionary Unit, which deployed to the area final summer time.
Related Press author Andrea Rodríguez in Havana contributed to this report.