Cuba

Trump showers acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez with praise after first phone call since the US military’s abduction of President Nicolas Maduro.

Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodriguez has pledged to continue releasing prisoners detained under the presidency of Nicolas Maduro and described her first phone call with United States President Donald Trump since Maduro’s abduction by US forces as positive.

Rodriguez, Maduro’s former vice ‌president, said on Wednesday that she ⁠had a long, ​productive and courteous ‍phone call with the US president, in ⁠which the two discussed a bilateral agenda that would benefit both countries.

Trump, in a post on his Truth Social platform, said the two discussed oil, minerals, trade and national security, describing how “this partnership” between the US and Venezuela would be “spectacular”.

“I think we’re getting along very well with Venezuela,” Trump said at the White House after the lengthy call, describing Rodriguez as a “terrific person”, adding that US Secretary of State ‍Marco Rubio had also been in touch with the acting president.

Trump’s praise of Rodriguez follows after President Maduro and his wife, First Lady Cilia Flores, were abducted by the US military in an attack on the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, on January 3. Maduro and Flores are now being held in prison in the US.

Trump said last week that a second ⁠wave of US attacks on Venezuela had been cancelled amid “cooperation” from leaders in Caracas, including the release of a large ‍number of prisoners as a sign of “seeking peace” with Washington.

Earlier on Wednesday, during her first media briefing since Maduro’s abduction, Rodriguez said Venezuela was entering a “new political moment” and the process of releasing detainees “has not yet concluded”.

“This opportunity is for Venezuela and for the people of Venezuela to be able to see reflected a new moment where coexistence, where living together, where recognition of the other allows building and erecting a new spirituality,” Rodriguez said in her address.

Flanked by her brother and National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez, and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, the acting president also pledged “strict” enforcement of the law and credited Maduro with already initiating the release of prisoners.

“Messages of hatred, intolerance, acts of violence will not be permitted,” Rodriguez said.

The renewed promise to continue freeing prisoners followed after Jorge Rodriguez announced in parliament on Tuesday that more than 400 detainees had been freed recently.

While Venezuelan authorities deny that they hold political prisoners, the release of people held for political reasons in Venezuela has been a long-running call of rights groups, international bodies and opposition figures.

Rights groups in recent days have criticised the slow release of prisoners by the post-Maduro leadership.

Trump is scheduled to meet on Thursday with Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado at the White House, their first in-person meeting since the abduction of Maduro.

Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, has offered to give Trump her prize, ‌but the Nobel Committee said the Peace Prize cannot be transferred.

MEXICO CITY — Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum said she had “a very good conversation” with President Trump on Monday and that their two governments will continue working together on security issues without the need for U.S. intervention against drug cartels.

The approximately 15-minute call came after Sheinbaum said Friday she had requested dialogue with the Trump administration at the end of a week in which he had said he was ready to confront drug cartels on the ground and repeated the accusation that cartels were running Mexico.

Trump has repeatedly offered to send the U.S. military after the cartels and Sheinbaum has always declined, but after the U.S. removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Trump’s comments about Mexico, Cuba and Greenland carried new weight.

“He (Trump) asked me my opinion about what they had done in Venezuela and I told him very clearly that our constitution is very clear, that we do not agree with interventions and that was it,” Sheinbaum said.

Trump “still insisted that if we ask for it, they could help” with military forces, which Sheinbaum said she again rejected. “We told him, so far it’s going very well, it’s not necessary, and furthermore there is Mexico’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and he understood.”

In an interview with Fox News aired last Thursday, Trump said, “We’ve knocked out 97% of the drugs coming in by water and we are going to start now hitting land, with regard to the cartels. The cartels are running Mexico. It’s very sad to watch.”

Sheinbaum said Monday the two leaders agreed to continue working together.

Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Secretary Juan Ramón de la Fuente spoke Sunday with his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Rubio asked for “tangible results” and more cooperation to dismantle the cartels, according to a statement from the U.S. State Department.

Sheinbaum said Mexico shared those results, including a significant drop in homicides, falling U.S. fentanyl seizures and fentanyl overdose deaths.

Experts still see U.S. intervention in Mexico as unlikely because Mexico is doing what the U.S. asks and is a critical economic partner, but expect Trump to continue using such rhetoric to maintain pressure on Mexico to do more.

Sheinbaum said the two leaders did not speak about Cuba, which Trump threatened Sunday. Mexico is an important ally of the island nation, including selling it oil that it will need even more desperately now that the Trump administration says it will not allow any more oil shipments from Venezuela to Cuba.

WASHINGTON — President Obama took historic steps to thaw the hostile, Cold War-era relationship with the island nation of Cuba, 120 miles south of Miami. President Trump did his best to put everything back on ice.

Now the Biden administration says it will lift some of Trump’s restrictions on business and travel between the U.S. and Cuba, and renew diplomatic talks.

But President Biden’s initial actions will disappoint advocates longing for the more robust relationship that was emerging in the Obama years.

Although he promised during the campaign to aggressively reverse Trump’s Cuba policy, Biden’s plans will have to roll out more slowly than some of his advisors had hoped.

He faces stiff resistance in Congress from members opposed to détente with Cuba, including from one of the Senate’s most powerful Democrats. At the same time, Cuba’s behavior has become more controversial with repression of dissidents and support for Venezuela. And Trump left numerous obstacles, such as formally declaring Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism, which takes time and a bundle of red tape to reverse.

“There was never going to be Obama Redux,” said Cuba expert John Kavulich, head of an economic institute that for decades has focused on Cuba.

The Biden government will remove harsh Trump restrictions that most directly harmed civilian Cubans, administration officials said. First of those are the limits on the amount of remittances that Cuban Americans can send to their relatives on the island. The administration will also restore some of the wiring services, including Western Union, that are used to transmit the money and that the previous government blocked. The money is a lifeline for many Cubans.

Biden’s team also intends to allow more travel between the countries, people familiar with the plans said. U.S.-origin flights to various Cuban cities were opened under Obama, along with a large cruise ship itinerary. But those mostly shut down under Trump. Obama’s reasoning was that the exposure of Cubans to more Westerners would plant the seeds of democratization; Trump’s people argued that a lot of the dollars spent by tourists and other visitors ended up in the hands of the Cuban military.

Biden’s first steps will be taken as initial gestures, while more difficult matters are debated.

“Politically he is going to keep it limited for now,” said John Caulfield, former head of the U.S. mission in Havana and specialist in U.S.-Cuba policy. Caulfield said Biden needs to see how much political will there is in Havana.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel has said he welcomes dialogue with Washington, but without preconditions.

Biden may also rebuild the staff at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana, which sank to a skeleton crew under Trump, and resume issuing visas to Cuban nationals.

Since Biden assumed office, his aides have become more circumspect about the plans for Cuba, repeating publicly that the policy is “under review.”

However, Juan Gonzalez, an Obama administration alum who is now head of Western Hemisphere affairs for Biden’s National Security Council, last week confirmed broad strokes of the new policy.

Biden’s “commitment on Cuba is to lift the limitations on remittances and make possible the travel of Americans to the island,” he said in Spanish to Spanish-language news channel Univision.

The previous administration “only penalized Cuban Americans and the Cuban people in the middle of a pandemic” by making it difficult for them to receive money from relatives and “did nothing to try to advance a democratic future in Cuba,” Gonzalez said.

Two other people who have participated in talks about Cuba with members of the administration confirmed the steps. The State Department declined comment.

Obama’s opening with Cuba, announced in 2014, came in his second term, when he no longer had to worry about reelection and after the critical and traditionally Republican Florida vote in the 2012 contest had moved into his camp.

He reestablished the U.S. Embassy in Havana, made the first trip there of an American president in 90 years, and oversaw the revival of numerous bilateral operations, like the interdiction of drug traffickers.

Biden, by contrast, must confront the issue early in his first term, when not only are Florida Republicans including Sen. Marco Rubio arrayed against him, but Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a hawk on Cuba, is ascending to the powerful chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Nine days before leaving office, Trump’s Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo embedded extra obstacles that would trip up the Biden administration in its efforts to return to rapprochement with Cuba. Pompeo and Trump put Cuba on the list of state “sponsors of terrorism” with only three other countries: Iran, North Korea and Syria.

Most experts say the designation is purely political. Normally this designation comes after an extensive review by the State Department and then consultation with Congress. That did not happen.

Politically it puts Biden in the tricky position of having to affirmatively recertify that Cuba is not sponsoring terrorism, and Havana’s support for Colombia’s leftist guerrillas and Venezuela dictator Nicolas Maduro will complicate that. Cuba and Venezuela exchange intelligence officers, doctors, oil and possibly weapons.

While there is wide confidence among lawmakers and academics that Biden will fulfill some of his Cuba campaign promises, there is also concern the administration will stumble if it begins to demand Cuba take reciprocal steps, such as freeing dissidents from jail, to “earn” U.S. concessions. It’s a tactic that has never worked.

“There will be a temptation to demand reciprocity and concessions from the Cubans in return,” said Peter Kornbluh, coauthor of “Back Channel to Cuba,” a book recounting Obama’s secret negotiations. “The history of negotiations with Cuba demonstrates that the quid pro quo approach is a non-starter, and a recipe for policy failure.”

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) has lobbied both Biden and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken on reestablishing full ties with Cuba, making similar warnings.

Richard Feinberg, a veteran of the Clinton White House and now an international political economy professor at UC San Diego, also cautioned against “overdemanding,” saying the Biden team is “overestimating U.S. leverage worldwide.”

“The administration is looking for positive developments on the island to wrap their announcements around,” Feinberg said. Earlier this month, Diaz-Canel, struggling with a moribund economy, vastly expanded the list of small businesses that Cubans may operate, the most important step Havana has taken in allowing a form of private enterprise.

The most ardent Cuba advocates in Congress and elsewhere are reviving a campaign to end the 59-year-old U.S. embargo on Cuba, initiated by President Kennedy to isolate the island’s communist leadership. Obama, along with experts, historians and activists, long declared the embargo a failure — it never unseated revolutionary leader Fidel Castro or his successors — and it remains the sorest point Cubans cite in the troubled relationship with the United States.

It can only be lifted by Congress, where Rubio or like-minded Republicans would work to block such action.

“Our nation’s embargo on Cuba is an artifact from the 1960s,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, said as he introduced a bill this month to repeal the sanctions. “To continue this outdated, harmful policy of isolation would be a failure of American leadership.”

Jan. 11 (UPI) — President Donald Trump said Sunday that Cuba must strike a deal with the United States or face deeper economic hardship as its access to Venezuelan oil diminishes.

On Truth Social, Trump posted: “Venezuela now has the United States of America, the most powerful military in the World (by far!), to protect them, and protect them we will. THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”

Trump’s comments followed remarks he made on Jan. 4, when he said the Cuban government could collapse without direct U.S. intervention following the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by American forces.

In addition, Trump reposted a Truth Social user’s message suggesting that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban American, should serve as Cuba’s president, responding, “Sounds good to me.”

Rubio has been vocal about Cuba’s political and economic situation in the wake of changes in Venezuela and has said Havana is in “serious trouble” and that its leaders have reason to be concerned.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel posted on X Sunday, “Cuba is a free, independent, and sovereign nation. No one dictates what we do. Cuba does not aggress; it is aggressed upon by the United States for 66 years, and it does not threaten; it prepares, ready to defend the Homeland to the last drop of blood.”

On Friday, the United States seized another oil tanker in the Caribbean Sea, the Olina, as part of efforts to control Venezuelan oil that had been bound for the region, including Cuba.

U.S. Southern Command wrote on X that it’s “unwavering in its mission to defend our homeland by ending illicit activity and restoring security in the Western Hemisphere.”

United States President Donald Trump says no more Venezuelan oil or money will go to Cuba, and he has suggested the communist-run island should strike a deal with Washington, ramping up pressure on the longtime US nemesis.

Venezuela is Cuba’s biggest oil supplier, but no cargo has departed from Venezuelan ports to the Caribbean country since the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by US forces on January 3 amid a strict US oil blockade on the OPEC country, according to the latest shipping data.

“THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday.

“Cuba lived, for many years, on large amounts of OIL and MONEY from Venezuela,” Trump added.

Trump did not elaborate on his suggested deal, but US officials have hardened their rhetoric against Cuba in recent weeks.

Earlier on Sunday, Trump also reposted a message on Truth Social suggesting US Secretary of State Marco Rubio could become the president of communist-ruled Cuba.

Trump shared that post with the comment: “Sounds good to me!”

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel rejected Trump’s threats in a post on X.

“Cuba is a free, independent, and sovereign nation. Nobody dictates what we do,” Diaz-Canel said.

“Cuba does not attack; it has been attacked by the US for 66 years, and it does not threaten; it prepares, ready to defend the homeland to the last drop of blood.”

Earlier, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez insisted “right and justice are on Cuba’s side”.

The US “behaves like an out-of-control criminal hegemon that threatens peace and security, not only in Cuba and this hemisphere, but throughout the entire world”, Rodriguez posted on X.

Rodriguez also said in a separate post on X that Cuba had the right to import fuel from any suppliers willing to export it. He also denied that Cuba had received financial or other “material” compensation in return for security services provided to any country.

Reporting from Cucuta, Colombia, Al Jazeera’s Alessandro Rampietti said that, despite its defiant rhetoric, Cuba may struggle to find alternative sources of fuel.

“Cuba is going through a very, very difficult situation with rolling blackouts, fuel shortages on a daily basis,” he said.

He added that an oil embargo from the US could worsen and could pressurise Havana to reach a deal with Washington.

Under a US trade embargo, Havana since 2000 has increasingly relied on Venezuelan oil provided as part of a deal struck with Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez.

As its operational refining capacity dwindled in recent years, Venezuela’s supply of crude and fuel to Cuba has fallen. But the South American country is still the largest provider with about 26,500 barrels per day exported last year, according to ship-tracking data and internal documents of Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PDVSA. Venezuela’s shipments covered roughly 50 percent of Cuba’s oil deficit.

Cuba also relies on imported crude and fuel provided by Mexico in smaller volumes.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum last week said her country had not increased supply volumes but, given recent political events in Venezuela, Mexico had turned into an “important supplier” of crude to Cuba.

Meanwhile, amid Trump’s threats to Cuba, Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane said Americans generally want Trump to focus on the domestic economy.

“There is an affordability crisis in this country, groceries are expensive, housing is expensive, health insurance has gone up,” she said, reporting from Washington, DC.

“This is a president who has said he will focus on America First. We have now seen him bomb seven countries, … so within [Trump’s] base, they are starting to see cracks because this is not what he promised on his campaign trail,” she added.

BOSTON — A federal judge said Friday that she expects to temporarily block efforts by the Trump administration to end a program that offered temporary legal protections for more than 10,000 family members of citizens and green card holders.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani said at a hearing that she planned to issue a temporary restraining order but did not say when it would be issued. This case is part of a broader effort by the administration to end temporary legal protection for numerous groups and comes just over a week since another judge ruled that hundreds of people from South Sudan may live and work in the United States legally.

“The government, having invited people to apply, is now laying traps between those people and getting the green card,” said Justin Cox, an attorney who works with Justice Action Center and argued the case for the plaintiffs. “That is incredibly inequitable.”

This case involved a program called Family Reunification Parole, or FRP, and affects people from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras. Most of them are set to lose their legal protections, which were put in place during the Biden administration, by Wednesday. The Department of Homeland Security terminated protections late last year.

The case involves five plaintiffs, but lawyers are seeking to have any ruling cover everyone that is part of the program.

“Although in a temporary status, these parolees did not come temporarily; they came to get a jump-start on their new lives in the United States, typically bringing immediate family members with them,” plaintiffs wrote in their motion. “Since they arrived, FRP parolees have gotten employment authorization documents, jobs, and enrolled their kids in school.”

The government, in its brief and in court, argued that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has the authority to terminate any parole program and gave adequate notice by publishing the termination in the federal registry. It also argued that the program’s termination was necessary on national security grounds because the people had not been property vetted. It also said resources to maintain this program would be better used in other immigration programs.

“Parole can be terminated at any time,” Katie Rose Talley, a lawyer for the government told the court. “That is what is being done. There is nothing unlawful about that.”

Talwani conceded that the government can end the program but she took issue with the way it was done.

The government argued that just announcing in the federal registry it was ending the program was sufficient. But Talwani demanded the government show how it has alerted people through a written notice — a letter or email — that the program was ending.

“I understand why plaintiffs feel like they came here and made all these plans and were going to be here for a very long time,” Talwani said. “I have a group of people who are trying to follow the law. I am saying to you that, we as Americans, the United States needs to.”

Lower courts have largely supported keeping temporary protections for many groups. But in May, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to strip temporary legal protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants for now, pushing the total number of people who could be newly exposed to deportation to nearly 1 million.

The justices lifted a lower-court order that kept humanitarian parole protections in place for more than 500,000 migrants from four countries: Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The decision came after the court allowed the administration to revoke temporary legal status from about 350,000 Venezuelan migrants in another case.

The court did not explain its reasoning in the brief order, as is typical on its emergency docket. Two justices publicly dissented.

Casey writes for the Associated Press.

BUESNOS AIRES, Jan. 6 (UPI) — Cuba is navigating another delicate moment in its recent history after the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces Saturday.

The operation that removed him from Caracas and left him facing a court in New York killed 32 Cuban soldiers, part of Maduro’s praetorian guard, and abruptly dismantled the island’s main economic lifeline.

The blow comes amid an energy and health crisis already considered the worst in decades — and one that could now deepen rapidly.

For more than 20 years, the alliance with Venezuela served as a strategic pillar for the Cuban government. The exchange of subsidized oil for medical and security services allowed Havana to sustain its economy after the Soviet collapse and cushion the impact of the U.S. embargo.

Maduro’s fall and the prospect of a regime change in Caracas directly disrupt that balance and place Cuba in a position of heightened economic and political vulnerability.

In the days after the Venezuelan leader’s arrest, the Cuban government responded with a mix of public gestures of support, internal political mobilization and tighter security.

On Saturday, President Miguel Díaz-Canel led a protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Havana, where he said Cuba was prepared to defend its alliance with Venezuela “even at a very high cost.”

The next day, the government decreed two days of national mourning in response to events in Venezuela. Senior officials dominated state television broadcasts to reinforce the idea of a “shared homeland” and a historic resistance to adversity.

The official narrative sought to counter statements by U.S. President Donald Trump, who publicly warned that allies of chavismo would face direct consequences.

Speaking about the island nation just 90 miles from Key West, Fla., Trump said, “Cuba is ready to fall … going down for the count,” while aboard Air Force One on Sunday.

On Monday, according to diplomatic sources, Cuban authorities stepped up surveillance at strategic facilities and convened emergency meetings. At the same time, reports of prolonged blackouts multiplied across several provinces — a concrete sign of the fragility of the energy system, as Venezuelan assistance could disappear or be sharply reduced within weeks.

Cuba’s energy crisis stems from a combination of obsolete infrastructure, chronic lack of maintenance and fuel shortages.

Most electricity generation depends on decades-old thermoelectric plants that are frequently offline due to breakdowns. Limited alternative capacity forces the state to rely on floating plants and diesel generators, whose operation depends on imports the country cannot secure due to a lack of hard currency or the loss of free supplies from traditional allies such as Venezuela.

Venezuelan lawyer and former prosecutor Zair Mundaray told UPI that for decades, Cuba depended entirely on Venezuelan oil, and that the collapse of Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., Venezuela’s state‑owned oil and gas company, which started around 2014, broke that anchor. That left the island exposed to more frequent blackouts and a deeper economic downturn.

“In that vacuum, Mexico’s assistance emerged,” Mundaray said.

Press reports indicate that during the peak years of cooperation with Cuba, Caracas sent between 90,000 and 120,000 barrels per day. Since 2023, the Mexican state has shipped hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude and diesel to Cuba in operations valued at more than $300 million.

For economic historian Leandro Morgenfeld at the University of Buenos Aires, one of the objectives of U.S. intervention in Venezuela is to deepen Cuba’s isolation.

“The United States sees the Western Hemisphere as its exclusive domain. It will not accept the presence of extra-hemispheric forces and is willing to remove governments if it believes its interests or national security are at risk,” Morgenfeld said.

From that perspective, he added, the goal goes beyond Venezuela and seeks to dismantle the political and economic ties that sustain adversarial governments in the region, including Cuba.

“That is why they want to cut the political and economic link with Venezuela and further suffocate the island. Despite the blockade, they aim to intensify financial pressure to achieve what they have pursued for decades: the fall of the Cuban revolutionary government,” he said.

Morgenfeld said concern in Havana is real and deep. Cuba has faced a complex economic situation for years, marked by sanctions, lack of hard currency and low productivity.

“It is no longer, as in other times, an economy with easy sources of financing. If chavismo were to fall, the impact on Cuba would be very severe, economically and politically,” he said, while noting that a full regime change in Venezuela has not yet occurred.

From another angle, Colombian political scientist Christian Arias Barona said it is premature to anticipate an immediate collapse of the Cuban model.

He told UPI that as long as Delcy Rodríguez remains in power and U.S. hostility does not intensify, an abrupt shift is unlikely.

“Cuba would not face a drastic alteration in its economy or international relations, especially in its ties with Venezuela, from which it receives significant assistance, particularly in energy,” Arias Barona said. “Nor would its links with Russia and China be immediately affected.”

He recalled that Cuba’s recent history reflects an ability to adapt to adverse scenarios. Since the 1959 revolution, the island has faced what he described as constant “aggressions and hostilities” from the United States, including the ongoing economic embargo.

“That experience has allowed it to develop mechanisms of political and diplomatic survival,” he said.

Arias Barona also noted that the U.N. General Assembly has repeatedly voted against the U.S. embargo on Cuba, calling it a unilateral measure without backing in international law.

However, he said the United States, as a permanent member of the Security Council, has maintained its position and secured occasional support, including from Israel and, in recent votes, Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay.

“What we are seeing today is a situation that increases Cuba’s vulnerability,” he said.

Sociologist Luis Wainer, also an academic at the University of Buenos Aires, agreed it is too early to project definitive scenarios.

“We do not know whether there will be a change in the political and economic model, how such a transition would look or even whether a transition will exist,” he told UPI.

“We are at a moment of negotiations, where what will be defined is who manages to impose the conditions,” he said.

Wainer said strong interest exists in framing this moment as a return to the Special Period, the severe economic and social crisis that began in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s main ally and supplier, and resulted in extreme shortages of fuel, food and medicine.

“There is a tendency to think Cuba will return to that scenario, but Cuban experience itself shows the country has developed creative responses to sustain itself without surrendering sovereignty,” he said.

Those responses include selective openings to new trade schemes, agreements with strategic sectors in other countries and the promotion of activities such as international tourism.

In that context, he highlighted the political and economic impact of Latin America’s leftward shift following Hugo Chávez’s electoral victory in 1998.

“That progressive cycle was a key lifeline for Cuba,” Wainer said. “It enabled regional integration, political cooperation and economic agreements that were fundamental for the island, especially with Venezuela.”

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

US president says a military operation focused on Colombia’s government ‘sounds good’ to him.

United States President Donald Trump has threatened his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, in the wake of Washington’s abduction of Venezuela’s leader, and said he believed the government in Cuba, too, was likely to fall soon.

Trump made the comments late on Sunday while speaking to reporters on board Air Force One.

“Venezuela is very sick. Colombia is very sick too, run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States. And he’s not going to be doing it very long. Let me tell you,” the US president said.

When asked if he meant an operation by the US on Colombia, Trump said: “Sounds good to me.”

He added that a US military intervention in Cuba is unlikely because the country appears to be ready to fall on its own.

“Cuba is ready to fall. Cuba, looks like it’s ready to fall. I don’t know how they , if they can hold that, but Cuba now has no income. They got all of their income from Venezuela, from the Venezuelan oil,” Trump said.

“They’re not getting any of it. Cuba literally is ready to fall. And you have a lot of great Cuban Americans that are going to be very happy about this.”

Trump’s comments come a day after US forces captured and detained Maduro and his wife in a surprise attack on Caracas. The Venezuelan leader and his wife, Cilia Flores, are due to appear in court on drug-related charges in New York later on Monday.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump also insisted the US was ‘in charge’ of Venezuela, even though the country’s Supreme Court has appointed the country’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez as interim leader.

He also reiterated a threat to send the US military back to Venezuela if it “doesn’t behave”.

Trump has made no secret of his ambitions to expand US presence in the Western hemisphere and revive the 19th century Monroe Doctrine that states Latin America falls under the US sphere of influence. Trump has called his 21st century version the “Don-roe Doctrine”.

The US president has also previously threatened both Colombia and Cuba. Over the weekend he said that Petro has to “watch his ass” and that the political situation in Cuba was “something we’ll end up talking about because Cuba is a failing nation”.

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

Havana declares two days of mourning for the Cubans killed in US’s operation to capture Nicolas Maduro.

The government of Cuba has announced that 32 ⁠of its ​citizens were ‍killed during the raid by the United States to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas.

It said on Sunday that there would be two days of mourning on ‌January 5 and ‌6 in ⁠honour of those killed and that ‌funeral arrangements would be announced.

More soon…