US president announces efforts being made to strike a deal having earlier threatened to stop island importing oil<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Washington is negotiating with Havana\u2019s leadership to strike a deal, Donald Trump has said, days after threatening Cuba\u2019s reeling economy with a virtual oil blockade<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCuba is a failing nation. It has been for a long time but now it doesn\u2019t have Venezuela<\/a> to prop it up. So we\u2019re talking to the people from Cuba, the highest people in Cuba, to see what happens,\u201d Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think we\u2019re going to make a deal with Cuba<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump gave no indication what such a deal might entail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The US president had said on Saturday: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t have to be a humanitarian crisis. I think they probably would come to us and want to make a deal \u2026 They have a situation that\u2019s very bad for Cuba. They have no money. They have no oil. They lived off Venezuelan money and oil, and none of that\u2019s coming now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump\u2019s second administration has been ratcheting up pressure on the communist-run island nation off south Florida since it ousted the Venezuelan leader, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, whose country was a close ally of Havana and a crucial source for oil exports to Cuba.<\/p>\n\n\n\n