C.I.A. Director Travels to Cuba as U.S. Intensifies Strain

John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, traveled to Cuba on Thursday, the Cuban authorities introduced.

Mr. Ratcliffe is the highest-ranking official to go to Cuba and the primary for the reason that administration started intensifying its stress marketing campaign in opposition to the Communist authorities.

The Cuban authorities stated Mr. Ratcliffe had met with the nation’s inside minister. The assembly, according to Cuba’s state-controlled newspaper, was to handle “the current situation” between the 2 international locations.

Cuban officers stated they’d used the assembly to make the purpose that their nation doesn’t represent a menace to U.S. nationwide safety, the state newspaper reported.

The Trump administration has not explicitly acknowledged what political or financial adjustments it needs to see in Cuba, however the broad objective is seemingly to finish the Communist Party’s lock on political management.

President Trump has flexed American energy to chop off overseas oil shipments to Cuba, whose ramshackle economic system has been thrown into disaster. The United States has additionally elevated navy and intelligence reconnaissance flights across the island. The flights are half of what’s anticipated to be a bigger American navy buildup.

Trump officers, led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have had non-public talks with Cuban leaders within the hope that financial desperation will pressure them to make concessions they’ve lengthy resisted.

In late April, a delegation of State Department officers visited Havana to press Cuban leaders, together with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, on a possible diplomatic deal. Mr. Rubio himself has spoken on to Mr. Rodríguez Castro, a grandson of the previous chief Raúl Castro.

In public remarks, Mr. Rubio has recommended that the United States may accept broad financial reforms to Cuba’s socialist system reasonably than dramatic adjustments to its political construction. But in a Wednesday interview with Fox News, Mr. Rubio stated that he doubted it was attainable “to change the trajectory of Cuba as long as these people are in charge in that regime.”

“I hope I’m wrong. We’ll give them a chance,” he added. “But I don’t think it’s going to happen.”