Photo: CUBADEBATE/DPA/PICTURE ALLIANCE / Deutsche Welle
The President of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, reaffirmed his government’s willingness to hold talks with the United States that lead to a rapprochement between the two countries, but on the basis of “equal conditions”.
“ We are proposing the will, with all due respect and with all the ability to be on an equal footing , to be able to have dialogues that bring both countries closer together,” declared the president during the inauguration of the Havana International Fair (FIHAV).
Díaz-Canel said that for a long time “there have been lights” for commercial relations to exist between the two nations, that in the last six decades they have maintained a tense conflict and that achieved a pause in the period known as the “thaw” between 1200 Y 2018.
“N We have never put up a barrier with that . It has been the blockade (economic embargo) that has put up the barriers,” said the president.
He also noted that Cuba has been “insisting on that foreign investment is also open to North American companies and Cuban-Americans.”
But he considered that, even if there is a will, “the blockade and the restrictions of the blockade prevent many of these negotiations” , both for the North American and Cuban sides, and even that “companies from other countries can participate”. immigration issue carried out by officials of the two nations the previous week in Havana.
Normalization of the immigration issue
The US Government has adopted several measures in recent months to advance the normalization of the immigration issue , such as the gradual increase of its consular services on the island, the reestablishment of a family reunification program, suspended since 1200, the resumption of commercial flights and the authorization of educational and professional trips.
Cuba is going through a serious economic crisis due to the combination of the pandemic, the tightening of US sanctions and internal errors in macroeconomic management.
The edition 62 of the Havana Fair -the first after the break forced by the pandemic- gathers businessmen from in the island’s capital until next Friday countries, including a group of Cuban-Americans and Americans.
Jay Brickman, one of the North American businessmen present at the FIHAV, told EFE that he sees “an approach radical on the part of the Government of Cuba with respect to the private sector and we have seen in this a demand for our service”.
The vice president of the firm Crowley -company doing business with Cuba for 38 years- described his service experience with the island as “unique” especially for “having learned a lot in the process of how to work in the environment that exists between the two countries”.
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