Rubio warns Cuba after ex-leader indicted

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 US indictment of its former president Raul Castro.

The US 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 US 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.