With the two longtime adversaries set to restore diplomatic relations on Monday after a 54-year break, Cuba said the United States would need to abandon its policy of regime change in order to improve overall ties.
At the Summit of the Americas in Panama where Obama met face-to-face with Cuban President Raul Castro in April, the American president told a news conference: "On Cuba, we are not in the business of regime change."
That signaled a break from U.S. efforts to overthrow or destabilize the Cuban government since Fidel Castro's rebels came to power in a 1959 revolution. Fidel Castro, 88, retired in 2008 when his brother Raul, 84, took over.
"You have to appreciate the words of the president ... but you have to see what happens in practice," Gustavo Machin, deputy director for U.S. affairs in the Cuban Foreign Ministry, told reporters.
"We haven't seen anything" suggesting practical change, he said.
Machin cited multimillion-dollar annual budgets for what are commonly called the Cuban democracy programs, which Cuba sees as hostile efforts to undermine its government and socialist political system.
