Star Metro - US renews offer of $100 mn to Cuba if it cooperates

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking last week in Rome, said that Cuba had rejected an offer of $100 million in assistance, an assertion denied by the communist government in Havana.

The State Department on Wednesday publicly renewed the proposal, which comes after the United States piled new sanctions against key parts of Cuba's state-controlled economy.

"The regime refuses to allow the United States to provide this assistance to the Cuban people, who are in desperate need of assistance due to the failures of Cuba's corrupt regime," the State Department said.

"The decision rests with the Cuban regime to accept our offer of assistance or deny critical (life)-saving aid and ultimately be accountable to the Cuban people for standing in the way of critical assistance," it said.

It said that the support would include direct humanitarian assistance from the United States and funding for "fast and free" internet access -- which presumably would benefit dissidents in the one-party state that restricts media.

The United States, the statement said, was working to promote "meaningful reforms" in Cuba.

- Energy woes -

Cuba's power supplies have been dropping to new lows, according to data compiled by AFP, with prolonged blackouts and record generation shortfalls in recent days.

Sixty-five percent of Cuban territory endured simultaneous blackouts on Tuesday, according to the data.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel on Wednesday acknowledged the "particularly tense" situation but pinned blame squarely on the United States.

"This dramatic worsening has a single cause: the genocidal energy blockade to which the United States subjects our country, threatening irrational tariffs against any nation that supplies us with fuel," he wrote on X.

Cuba's economic woes intensified in January after the United States deposed Venezuela's leftist leader Nicolas Maduro, whose government had been providing around half of the island's fuel needs.

Since then, only one Russian tanker has reached Cuba,

President Donald Trump's administration already provided $6 million in humanitarian aid to Cuba but channeled it through the charity of the Catholic Church, which has long played a go-between role for the two countries.

After Rubio's initial comments in Rome, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said the offer was a "lie" that "no one here knows anything about."

"Will it be a donation, a deception or a dirty deal to curtail our independence? Wouldn't it be easier to lift the fuel blockade?" Rodriguez wrote on X.

Rubio, a Cuban-American who vociferously opposed the communist system founded by Fidel Castro, has been widely reported to be in contact with segments of the Cuban elite in hopes of stirring change.

Trump has publicly mused about taking over the island, which has been under a US embargo almost continuously since Castro's 1959 revolution.

Last week the United States imposed sanctions on a Cuban military conglomerate that controls nearly 40 percent of the economy, after Trump signed an order to punish any foreign banks that transact with US-blacklisted entities.

O.Poirier--SMC