US offers new relationship to Cuba in Rubio message

WASHINGTON, May 20 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary ‌of State Marco Rubio ​offered ​to forge a new relationship between the U.S. and Cuba on Wednesday in a video message to the Cuban people, proposing $100 million in aid and blaming ‌Cuba's leaders for shortages of electricity, food and fuel.

"We in the U.S. are ⁠offering to help you not only alleviate the current crisis, but also to build a better future," Rubio said ‌in a State Department message ‌on Cuban Independence Day.

The Trump administration is expected to announce criminal charges against former Cuban president Raul Castro on Wednesday, in a move that would mark a step-up in Washington's ​pressure campaign against the Caribbean island's communist government.

In his video address delivered in Spanish, Rubio blamed the country's current problems on greed and corruption in its leadership.

"The real reason ⁠you don't have electricity, fuel, or food is because those who control your country have plundered billions of dollars, but nothing ​has been used to help the people," Rubio said.

He said the United States is offering $100 million dollars in food and medicine to the Cuban ​people, but it must be distributed by the Catholic ‌Church or other trusted charitable groups.

In a response Wednesday morning, Cuba's embassy in the U.S. said Rubio had lied and that the United States ⁠was subjecting the island nation to cruelty.

"The reason the U.S. Secretary of State lies so repeatedly and unscrupulously when referring to Cuba and trying to justify the aggression to which he subjects the Cuban people ⁠is not ignorance or incompetence," the embassy said in a post on X. "He knows full well that there ​is no excuse for such cruel and ruthless aggression."

President Donald Trump has been seeking regime change in Cuba, where communists have been in charge since Raul Castro's late brother Fidel Castro led a revolution in ‌1959.

The charges against Castro, 94, are expected to be based on a 1996 incident in which Cuban jets shot down planes operated by a ‌group of Cuban exiles, a U.S. Justice Department official told Reuters last week on the condition of ⁠anonymity.

The U.S. has effectively imposed a ‌blockade on the island by ​threatening sanctions on countries supplying it with fuel, triggering power outages and delivering blows to its already fragile economy.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu, Katharine Jackson; Editing by ‌Doina Chiacu)

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