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(Bloomberg) — A top American military officer held an unusual meeting with Cuban commanders at the edge of the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as the Trump administration continues a virtual blockade of the island nation and demands drastic reforms by its communist government.
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Marine General Francis Donovan, the leader of US Southern Command, met with Cuban General Roberto Legrá Sotolongo, first deputy minister of the chief of the General Staff, and other senior officers “for a brief exchange of operational security matters,” the command said Friday in a social media post, which included a photograph of the men, all wearing fatigues.
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Donovan, according to the post, “also led a perimeter security assessment of the naval base and discussed force protection, safety of service members and their families, and operational readiness with base officials.”
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US military officials did not elaborate on the visit, and the Cuban embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday evening.
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But Donovan’s tour of the base, on the southeast coast of the island, occurred a little more than two weeks after Central Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe led a delegation to Havana for talks with key government officials. People familiar with the matter said then that the US had grown frustrated over a lack of progress on getting the island to free up its economy and political system.
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Last week, the US charged the country’s 94-year-old former president, Raúl Castro, and several others with murder over the shooting down of two civilian aircraft in 1996.
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The administration’s clamor for major concessions by the regime, founded after the 1959 revolution by Fidel Castro, grew louder after US forces seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a January raid.
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Though the US first imposed a trade embargo on Cuba during the Eisenhower administration, President Donald Trump sharply escalated the economic offensive after he returned to office last year. Those actions have intensified already dire conditions in the country, and on May 13, the energy minister said that diesel and fuel oil needed to keep the power plants running had completely run out.
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Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have suggested that if the new restrictions don’t bring about a change in government, military force might be necessary.
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