BUENOS AIRES (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th November, 2020) Cuba believes that it can develop constructive relations with the United States after Democrat Joe Biden's victory in the US presidential election, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on Sunday.
With official results of the 2020 US presidential election yet to be announced, as the vote counting continues. All major US media have already called the presidential race for Biden. While Biden claimed victory on Saturday, incumbent President Donald Trump said the election was fraudulent.
"We acknowledge that the US people have taken a new direction in the presidential election. We believe in the possibility of constructive bilateral relations based on respect," Diaz-Canel wrote on Twitter.
The Cuban-US relations have long been at loggerheads. Following the victory of the Cuban revolutionaries over the US-backed regime, Washington severed diplomatic ties with Cuba and imposed a trade embargo on the country in the 1960s. Washington and Havana expressed their intention to start working on normalizing bilateral relations only in 2014. As a result, many restrictions on exchanges between the two countries were eased under then-US President Barack Obama.
Trump toughened the policy once he took office in 2016, restricting travel, boosting the economic embargo and imposing sanctions on Raul Castro, Cuba's Communist Party leader, over alleged human rights violations and for supporting the Venezuelan leadership.
