Cuba says it is prepared for possible US attack, president tells Havana rally

Havana: Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on Thursday that his country was prepared for a possible attack by the United States, as he addressed a mass rally in Havana marking the 65th anniversary of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.

Speaking to thousands gathered for the commemoration, Diaz-Canel said Cuba did not seek a confrontation but had a duty to be prepared.

“We don’t want that (confrontation) but it is our duty to be ready to avoid it, and if it were unavoidable, to win it”, he said.

Cuba has been on alert for a possible attack after repeated warnings from US President Donald Trump that Cuba is next after he toppled Venezuela’s leader Nicolas Maduro and went to war against Iran.

Washington and Havana have held talks aimed at easing tensions, but US media reports said those discussions between the longtime adversaries have not produced major progress.

Calls for dialogue without political concessions

Mariela Castro, the daughter of former president Raul Castro, said Cubans wanted engagement with Washington but not at the cost of their political system.

She also said Raul Castro, now 94, was indirectly involved in the talks. The former president had overseen the 2015 thaw in relations with the United States under then-president Barack Obama, a process later reversed by Trump. Raul’s grandson, Raul Rodriguez Castro, a colonel, is reportedly among the negotiators.

Diaz-Canel described the current situation as very grave, while reaffirming Cuba’s socialist identity, which Fidel Castro proclaimed on April 16, 1961.

Bay of Pigs anniversary revives historical memory

The Bay of Pigs invasion took place two years after Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries came to power and began nationalising US-owned businesses and properties on the island. Between April 15 and 19, about 1,400 anti-Castro Cuban exiles from Miami, trained and financed by the CIA, landed at the Bay of Pigs, roughly 250 kilometres south of Havana.

Cuban forces defeated the invading force, handing the United States a major setback. Six decades later, Washington has once again set its sights on Cuba.

After Maduro’s capture in Caracas, Trump imposed an oil blockade on Cuba, worsening the island’s most severe economic and energy crisis in decades.

Diaz-Canel rejected the US depiction of Cuba as a failed state.

“Cuba is not a failed state, it’s a besieged state”, he said.

Havana has largely attributed its economic difficulties to the longstanding US trade embargo imposed soon after Fidel Castro came to power, as well as the more recent oil blockade.

At the rally, 82-year-old attendee Maria Reguiero said Cubans remained determined to protect the country’s independence. She said that, as in 1961, they were “ready to defend their sovereignty, whatever the price.”