SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel told NBC News’ Meet the Press that he would not step down in his first interview with a U.S. network, a portion of which was broadcast Thursday.
In a nearly five-minute clip that is part of a longer interview scheduled to air on Sunday, journalist Kristen Welker asked Díaz-Canel if he would be “willing to step down if it meant saving Cuba. ”
Before answering, Díaz-Canel asked if she had ever posed that question to any other president in the world: “Is that a question from you, or is that coming from the State Department of the U.S. government?”
Díaz-Canel added: “In Cuba, the people who are in leadership position are not elected by the U.S. government, and they don’t have a mandate from the U.S. government. We have a free sovereign state.”
He said he became president not out of a “personal ambition or corporate ambition or even a party ambition,” but because of a mandate by the people.
“If the Cuban people understand that I am not fit for office, that I have no reason to be here, then I should not be holding this position of president, I will respond to them,” he said.
The interview comes as tensions between Cuba and the U.S. remain high despite both sides acknowledging talks, although no details have been shared.
Díaz-Canel accused the U.S. government of implementing a “hostile policy” against Cuba and said it has “no moral to demand anything from Cuba.”
He said the U.S. should recognize how much the policies have cost the Cuban people “and how much they have deprived the American people from a normal relationship with the Cuban people.”
Díaz-Canel noted that Cuba is interested in engaging in dialogue and discussing any topic without conditions, “not demanding changes from our political system as we are not demanding change from the American system, about which we have a number of doubts.”
Cuba blames a U.S. energy blockade for its deepening woes, with a lack of petroleum affecting the island’s health system, public transportation and the production of goods and services.
In late March, a Russian tanker carrying 730,000 barrels of crude oil arrived in Cuba, marking the island’s first oil shipment in three months. Russia has promised to send a second tanker.
Despite threatening tariffs in early January on countries that sell or provide oil to Cuba, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump allowed the tanker to proceed.
“Cuba’s finished,” Trump said at the time. “They have a bad regime. They have very bad and corrupt leadership and whether or not they get a boat of oil, it’s not going to matter.”
Cuba produces only 40% of the fuel it consumes, and it stopped receiving key oil shipments from Venezuela after the U.S. attacked the South American country in early January and arrested its then leader.