Cuba made a rare gesture of reciprocity to the United States on Thursday, three days before a historic visit by US President Barack Obama, but the olive branch was wrapped in spiky rhetoric against decades-old economic sanctions. Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said Cuba would remove a 10 percent tax on cash dollars in response to Washington's decision this week to relax stiff currency restrictions - but only after testing the new freedom to trade in greenbacks.
"In the coming days we will try to make transfers in dollars with banking entities in third countries and in the United States to verify that such transactions can be done," Rodriguez told a news conference. To be comfortable doing business with Cuba, he said, "The banks need to understand whether this measure means that in the near future the financial persecution against Cuba will end." Earlier this week, the White House chipped away at a sanctions regime dating back to 1960 by relaxing trade and tourism restrictions. It said it would allow US banks to process dollar transactions for Cuba as long as neither buyer nor seller are US entities.
Rodriguez said Obama could offer much more economic relief to Cuba without going to Congress, which must approve any definitive end to the trade embargo imposed three years after Fidel Castro's rebels overthrew a pro-American government in 1959. "If you want to empower the Cuban people, lift the blockade," Rodriguez said.
In 2004, in response to tightened sanctions imposed by former US President George W. Bush, Cuba abruptly halted the circulation of dollar bills and slapped a 10 percent surcharge on cash exchanges of greenbacks into Cuban pesos. Dollars were replaced in circulation by "convertible" Cuban pesos, pegged at one to the dollar but with the 10 percent surcharge for cash exchanges. Cuba today has two currencies, the local peso and the convertible peso.
For many years possessing dollars was illegal in Cuba but they were legalised in 1993. Obama and his family are due to visit Cuba on Sunday through Tuesday, only the second ever trip by a sitting US president and the first since the victory of Castro's revolution.
After more than half a century of Cold War-inspired animosity, Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro agreed to detonate in December 2014, pledging to normalise relations. The two countries restored diplomatic ties and reopened embassies in Washington and Havana last year.