HAVANA, Cuba – Bruno Rodriguez, Cuba’s minister of foreign affairs, stressed in a telephone interview with public media in Ecuador that the lifting of the U.S. embargo should be a unilateral act by the United States.

The Cuban foreign minister explained that the end of the economic, financial and commercial sanctions applied by Washington against Cuba for more than five decades now could never be a result of negotiations, or in response to concessions made by the government of the island.

Cuba is neither blockading the U.S. nor applying discriminatory measures against U.S. companies or U.S. tourists, noted the head of Cuban diplomacy, who warned that, despite recent executive measures adopted by President Barack Obama, the embargo “continues to be a suffocating reality.”

In this regard he noted that the U.S. president’s decision to authorize the use of dollars in transactions with the island has been “a mere announcement” because Cuban banks are still unable to open accounts in the northern neighbour.

“I can declare,” he asserted, “that until now no normal financial transactions have taken place.”

Rodriguez warned it won’t be possible to speak about normal ties as long as the States continues in possession of the Cuban territory occupied by the naval base in Guantanamo, or finances radio and television programs and transmissions designed to alter the prevailing constitutional order in Cuba.

He also warned that Washington keeps intact its strategic objectives to dominate Cuba economically and politically, citing as an example the opening in the field of telecommunications and the financial support to the non-state sector, which only seek, he said, to build opposition to the government.