CIA chief makes rare Cuba visit as island runs out of oil

The head of the CIA visited Cuba on Thursday, an extraordinary step-up in contact between Washington and Havana as the communist-run island reels from US pressure, declaring that it was out of oil. John Ratcliffe’s trip appeared to be only the second visit by a CIA director to Cuba since former leader Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution. Ratcliffe met with Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, grandson of former president Raul Castro, Interior Minister Lazaro Alvarez Casas and the head of Cuban intelligence services, and discussed intelligence cooperation, economic stability and security issues. Ratcliffe was there “to personally deliver President Donald Trump’s message that the United States is prepared to seriously engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes,’’ a CIA official told Associated Press. The US stressed that Cuba cannot continue to be a “safe haven for adversaries in the Western Hemisphere”. The visit came amid a deepening crisis in US-Cuba relations, with the island enduring constant power outages prompted by Trump’s fuel blockade. Only one tanker from Russia – a historic ally of the Cuban authorities – has got through. And that oil has now “run out,” Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy told state television. “The impact of the blockade is indeed causing us significant harm...because we are still not receiving fuel.” Trump has repeatedly signalled that he wants to topple the communist government in Cuba. The Trump administration was also seeking to indict Raul Castro, the 94-year-old brother of Fidel Castro, a US Department of Justice official told Reuters on Thursday. The timing of the potential indictment, which would need to be approved by a grand jury, was not immediately clear, but the official said it sounded imminent. The potential indictment of the former president was expected to focus on the downing of aircraft, the official said on condition of anonymity. CBS previously reported that the case relates to Cuba’s deadly 1996 shootdown of planes operated by humanitarian group Brothers to the Rescue. Representatives for Cuba’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the reported planned indictment. But Cuba framed the Ratcliffe visit as a chance to calm tensions. Cuba did not identify the officials Ratcliffe met. Rodriguez Castro previously secretly met with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the sidelines of a Caribbean Community summit in St Kitts in February. While he has never occupied a government post, he served as his grandfather’s bodyguard and later as head of Cuba’s equivalent of the Secret Service. The meeting with Ratcliffe 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 Cuban government statement read. The exchanges “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,” the Cuban statement added. Cuba “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,” it emphasised. Cuba has long had close ties with China, Russia and Venezuela. One of Cuba’s last economic lifelines was cut in January when US forces toppled the strongman leader of oil-rich Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, and instituted a fuel blockade. Rubio has renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid on the condition that the assistance be distributed by the Catholic Church, bypassing the government. In a post on X, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel urged the United States to instead lift its blockade. “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. Despite tensions, intergovernmental talks were ongoing, with a high-level diplomatic meeting taking place in Havana on April 10 – the first time a US government plane landed in the Cuban capital since 2016. Eastern Cuba on Thursday was plunged into the latest outage affecting the whole country, with power returning to some areas later in the day. The crisis prompted protests on the island. A resident of San Miguel del Padron, a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Havana, said that people had protested by banging pots and pans on Wednesday evening. Several other similar small demonstrations were held in neighbourhoods across the capital, according to accounts gathered by Agence France-Presse. Data compiled by Agence France-Presse showed prolonged blackouts and record generation shortfalls in recent days. Some 65 per cent of Cuban territory endured simultaneous blackouts on Tuesday. “It’s a broken, non-functional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” Rubio told Fox News. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to change the trajectory of Cuba as long as these people are in charge.” Additional reporting by Reuters and Associated Press

CIA chief makes rare Cuba visit as island runs out of oil

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Meeting in Havana comes as tensions between the two sides remain high over the US energy blockade

Meeting in Havana comes as tensions between the two sides remain high over the US energy blockade