Rubio warns Cuba after US indicts former leader

MIAMI — Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Cuba on Thursday that the United States was laser-focused on changing the communist system, after the island was stunned by a U.S. indictment of its former president Raul Castro.

The U.S. military announced that the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and its escort warships had entered the Caribbean, although President Donald Trump, asked if the deployment was meant to intimidate Cuba, said, "No, not at all." Rubio, a Cuban-American and vociferous opponent of Havana's government, described the island 90 miles (145 kilometers) from the U.S. shore as a "failed state" as it suffers a major economic crisis. "Their economic system doesn't work.

It's broken, and you can't fix it with the current political system that's in place," Rubio told reporters in Miami. "What they've gotten used to all these years is just buying time and waiting us out. "They're not going to be able to wait us out or buy time.

We're very serious.

We're very focused." Rubio said that the U.S. preference was "always a diplomatic solution" but warned that Trump had other options to pe