CIA Director Visits Cuba as Tensions Rise and Island Runs Out of Oil
The CIA mentioned Mr. Ratcliffe had met with Raúl G. Rodríguez Castro, recognized as “Raulito” or “El Cangrejo” (the Crab), the influential grandson of former president Raúl Castro. Mr. Ratcliffe additionally met with Lázaro Álvarez Casas, the minister of the inside, as properly as the top of Cuba’s intelligence companies, a CIA official mentioned.
At the identical time, federal prosecutors in Miami had been working towards securing an indictment of the elder Mr. Castro, who stays a pressure within the nation’s politics, in keeping with a number of individuals aware of the matter. The scope of the indictment and the quantity of defendants is being debated, but it surely might embrace drug trafficking costs and accusations related to Cuba’s downing in 1996 of plans run by the humanitarian help group Brothers to the Rescue, two of the individuals mentioned.
Mr. Ratcliffe arrived in Cuba the day after Vicente de la O Levy, the minister of power and mines, introduced that oil provides for home use and energy vegetation had been exhausted.
“We have absolutely no fuel oil, absolutely no diesel,” he mentioned. “In Havana, the blackouts today exceed 20 or 22 hours.”
The lack of oil has pressured individuals to depend on charcoal and even wooden to prepare dinner, and some individuals have taken to the streets, banging on taken pots and pans to specific their frustration.
The Cuban authorities has been grappling with a extreme power disaster for greater than two years as a result of of crumbling infrastructure and a dwindling oil provide from Venezuela, its longtime benefactor.
Venezuelan gas stopped flowing to Cuba fully in January, after the United States seized Venezuela’s chief and took management of its oil trade. Later, the Trump administration imposed an efficient blockade barring all overseas oil from reaching Cuba, which had additionally obtained shipments from Mexico.
A supply of an estimated 730,000 barrels of oil from Russia final month permitted by the Trump administration offered a quick reprieve.
The administration has additionally been engaged on the Castro indictment for months. The effort is being led by Jason A. Reding Quiñones, a Trump ally who serves as the US legal professional for the Southern District of Florida.
The Cuban authorities mentioned the United States had requested Thursday’s assembly. Cuban officers confused that their nation didn’t represent a risk to US nationwide safety and shouldn’t be included on an inventory of state sponsors of terrorism, Cuba’s state-controlled newspaper, Granma, reported.
“Once again it was made clear that the island does not harbor, support, finance or allow terrorist or extremist organizations; nor are there any foreign military or intelligence bases on its territory, and it has never supported any hostile activity against the US nor will it allow any action to be taken from Cuba against another nation,” the Cuban authorities mentioned.
