John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, traveled to Cuba on Thursday, the Cuban government announced.
Mr. Ratcliffe is the highest-ranking official to visit Cuba and the first since the administration began intensifying its pressure campaign against the Communist government.
The Cuban government said Mr. Ratcliffe had met with the country’s interior minister. The meeting, according to Cuba’s state-controlled newspaper, was to address “the current situation” between the two countries.
Cuban officials said they had used the meeting to make the point that their country does not constitute a threat to U.S. national security, the state newspaper reported.
The Trump administration has not explicitly stated what political or economic changes it wants to see in Cuba, but the broad goal is apparently to end the Communist Party’s lock on political control.
President Trump has flexed American power to cut off foreign oil shipments to Cuba, whose ramshackle economy has been thrown into crisis. The United States has also increased military and intelligence reconnaissance flights around the island. The flights are part of what is expected to be a larger American military buildup.
Trump officials, led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have had private talks with Cuban leaders in the hope that economic desperation will force them to make concessions they have long resisted.
In late April, a delegation of State Department officials visited Havana to press Cuban leaders, including Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, on a potential diplomatic deal. Mr. Rubio himself has spoken directly to Mr. Rodríguez Castro, a grandson of the former leader Raúl Castro.
In public remarks, Mr. Rubio has suggested that the United States might settle for broad economic reforms to Cuba’s socialist system rather than dramatic changes to its political structure. But in a Wednesday interview with Fox News, Mr. Rubio said that he doubted it was possible “to change the trajectory of Cuba as long as these people are in charge in that regime.”
“I hope I’m wrong. We’ll give them a chance,” he added. “But I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.
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