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Cuba’s top diplomat in the United States on Friday underscored the inviolability of her country’s sovereignty amid tenuous negotiations with the Trump administration and mounting fears that the US is planning to criminally indict a former Cuban president and possibly invade the island to abduct him.

Cuban Chargé d’Affaires Lianys Torres Rivera told The Hill that her country’s socialist government is open to negotiating with the US, but that “the only exception is our sovereignty, independence, and right to self-determination,” adding that “those are the red lines.”

Torres Rivera acknowledged that ramped-up US pressure — including President Donald Trump’s invasion threats and tightening of the internationally condemned 65-year economic embargo — is inflicting tremendous suffering on the Cuban people.

“It’s difficult. What the Cuban people are enduring these days is difficult,” she said. “They are under a collective punishment from the US.”

The Cuban government said Thursday that Trump’s oil blockade has left the island and its 11 million people without fuel — a situation United Nations experts last week described as illegal “energy starvation.”

Cuba Runs Out of Oil Amidst Suffocating US Blockade

“We have reorganized the whole country, the healthcare system, the education system, the transportation system, to keep the basic services running,” Torres Rivera told The Hill. “But it doesn’t mean that they are running normally. They are running under huge stress.”

Still, “a serious country that respects yourself… won’t put........

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