Havana's charge d'affaires says Cuba and Washington still talk, and are not negotiating

Lianys Torres Rivera, Cuba's charge d'affaires in Washington, told Reuters on 5 October that Havana and the United States still have channels of communication, and that those channels are not negotiations. She said the recent contact has included meetings, phone calls and WhatsApp messages. No negotiating agenda has been agreed. Official talks have not restarted.

She said Cuba remains open to a respectful dialogue and is not naive about President Donald Trump's threats. She said the island has increased preparations to defend itself against any US military action. The Straits Times carried the Reuters interview the same day.

The line she will not cross

Torres Rivera called the political system a red line. Havana, she said, will not negotiate changes to it. She treated demands for the removal of the Cuban leadership as a violation of sovereignty. That sentence sets the limit of the WhatsApp channel. A message can arrange a meeting. It cannot, on her account, trade the form of the state for a sanction.

She rejected the administration's claim that Cuba is a threat to US national security or that it interferes in US domestic affairs. She called those accusations a pretext for economic pressure, and she called the pressure collective punishment. The phrase is hers. It is a description of sanctions as aimed at the population, not only at officials. Reuters did not, in the lines carried by the Straits Times, quote a US official answering that phrase on Monday.

What a channel is, in her list

A channel, as she defined it, is a meeting, a call, or a WhatsApp exchange. A negotiation, as she defined it, would have an agenda and a path back to official talks. She said the two sides have made no progress toward either. The distinction is the information in the interview. Readers who hear that diplomats are talking can mistake contact for a deal. She said the contact has not become a deal.

The charge d'affaires is the senior Cuban diplomat in Washington in the absence of an ambassador whose credentials the host has accepted at a higher level. Her title is the rank of the channel. It is not a foreign minister's visit, and it is not a White House meeting. It is the embassy talking to counterparts, and saying so to a wire service.

The pressure campaign around the phone

The interview sits inside a Trump administration pressure campaign against the island. Torres Rivera did not list new sanctions in the quotes the Straits Times used. She did say preparations against military action have increased. That is a claim about Cuban readiness, not a claim that an order to strike has been given. No such order appears in the interview.

The practical consequence of her account is narrow and specific. Diplomats can still reach each other. They have not set an agenda. Havana's price for a real negotiation, on her telling, is that the political system stays off the table. Washington's price, which she says she will not pay, is a change in who governs. Until one of those prices moves, the WhatsApp thread remains a channel, which is the word she chose.