US warns Cuba on regime change after Raúl Castro indictment

Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Cuba on Thursday that the United States was laser-focused on changing the communist system, after the island was stunned by a US indictment of its former president Raúl Castro.

Rubio, a Cuban-American and vociferous opponent of Havana's government, described the island 145 kilometres from the US shore as a "failed state" as it suffers a major economic crisis.

"Their economic system doesn't work. It's broken, and you can't fix it with the current political system that's in place," Rubio told reporters in Miami.

"What they've gotten used to all these years is just buying time and waiting us out. They're not going to be able to wait us out or buy time. We're very serious. We're very focused."

Rubio said that the US preference was "always a diplomatic solution" but warned that Trump had other options to perceived threats.

"Cuba has always posed a national security threat to the United States," Rubio said, pointing to the presence of Russian and Chinese weapons and intelligence on the island.

Rubio also said Cuba had tentatively accepted an offer by the United States of $100 million (€86 million) in aid in return for reforms.

But he said it was unclear if the United States would accept Cuba's terms, as Washington insists on circumventing the military-backed enterprise that dominates the island's economy.

The US military announced that the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and its escort warships had entered the Caribbean, although President Donald Trump, asked if the deployment was meant to intimidate Cuba, said, "No, not at all."

Call for rally

The charges against Raúl Castro, the younger brother of Fidel Castro, the late iconic US nemesis who led Cuba's communist revolution that culminated in 1959, stem from the deadly downing of two civilian planes manned by anti-Castro pilots in 1996.

Cuban authorities called on citizens to protest the "despicable" indictment, with the official newspaper Granma urging Cubans to gather outside the US embassy in Havana on Friday morning.

"This isn't really an accusation, something from more than 30 years ago, but rather a public attack on a public figure," Fabian Fernandez, a 30-year-old accountant, told the AFP news agency.

"It's a matter of politics and public image," he added.

In January, Trump seized on a US domestic indictment of Venezuela's leftist leader Nicolás Maduro to send in US forces to depose him and take him into custody.

"The idea is to say, we can do to you what we did to Nicolás Maduro," said Christopher Sabatini, senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House.

"The military would certainly defend Cuba," in the event of US military intervention, Sabatini said. "Whether the people would or not, it's difficult to say."

Economic crisis

The Maduro operation led to the end of free oil from Venezuela to Cuba, which relied on its ally for nearly half its needs.

Cubans have suffered power outages of up to 20 hours a day and taps running dry.

Runaway inflation has caused the price of basic goods to soar and mountains of trash have piled up on the streets of Havana.

Pedro Leal, a 65-year-old retiree, accused Washington of hurting ordinary Cubans.

"What the US government is doing here now, aside from the energy blockade preventing us from bringing in fuel, honestly, it's criminal," he said.

In addition to murder, Castro has been charged with conspiracy to kill Americans and destruction of aircraft.

The Cuban government called the 1996 shootdown was "legitimate self-defence" against an airspace violation.

China and Russia both criticised Trump's steps on Cuba, which come as he tries to end an unpopular war he started with Israel against Iran.

China said it "firmly supports" Cuba and urged the United States to de-escalate tensions.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told a press briefing that Washington "should stop brandishing the sanctions stick and the judicial stick against Cuba and stop threatening force at every turn."

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "We believe that under no circumstances should such methods, which border on violence, be used against either former or current heads of state."