Cuban President Praises Excellent Result Meeting with Cuba-Initiative

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, who is on a transit visit in the United Kingdom, in his return trip to the island, described today as excellent a work meeting held with busiunesspeople.

After a meeting with representatives of the organization Initiative Cuba, the head of State recognized, in his Twitter account, the role played by that group that 'was born of the friendship with Baroness Lady John and our historical leader, Fidel Castro'.

In the meeting participated representatives of some 30 companies of the United Kingdom, members of Initiative Cuba, formed in 1995 to promote business between both nations.

We agreed to relaunch it in Havana in 2019, said the President.

When inaugurating the forum, the British co-president of this entity, lord David Triesman, welcomed Diaz-Canel, 'the first Cuban president to visit my country and the city where I was born', he stressed.

Triesman, who was minister of Foreign Relations in the 90s, expressed the commitment to relaunch economic and trade relations with the greater of the Antilles.

Along that line, he announced holding in Havana, at the end of the first half of 2019, a meeting of Initiative Cuba, onwe of the three organizations affiliated to the Caribbean Council.

The Cuban head of State thanked the kindbness of the business committee to attend the meeting this Tuesday, held in a downtown London hotel.

During his speech, Diaz-Canel underlined that the birth of this institution marked the beginning of a different relation between Cuba and the UK.

He also emphasized, it built a bridge in the cooperation and collaboration, plus a legacy nobody can deny.

Today there exist bases which guarantee the continuity and advance of this project because we know each other and know the obstacles and adversities to overcome, he said.

Díaz-Canel took the occasion to reiterate the will of the island to keep working for the development of the economic, trade and cooperation links with its similar of the United Kingdom.

He asserted that Cuba hopes for growth that guarantees the main social conquests achieved after the triumph of the Revolution of 1959 and denounced the long blockade imposed by the United States, the greatest obstacle to its development.

Diaz-Canel indicated that with the arrival of Donald Trump to the White House, the economic, financial and commercial siege against the Caribbean island had been harshened and there was a setback in the normalization process started by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

The Trump administration returned to the rhetoric of the Cold War, with threatening actions and speeches, he stressed.

In that context, he invited to increase the presence of British investors in sectors such as tourism, energy and biotechnological and pharmaceutical industry, among others.

The Cuban President arrived on Monday at the United Kingdom, to later return to his country after an intense international tour that took him, after a stopover in France, to Russia, the People's Democratic Republic of Korea, China, Vietnam and Laos.