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London, United Kingdom.- Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel held on Tuesday in London a meeting with British businessmen as part of a transit stopover in the United Kingdom en route to the island, after concluding an international tour.

Diaz-Canel met in London with representatives of 30 companies from the United Kingdom, members of the Cuba Initiative, an entity established in 1995 to promote business between both nations.

At the opening ceremony of the forum, the co-chairman of the UK-side of the Cuba Initiative, Lord David Triesman, welcomed the Cuban president, ‘the first president of Cuba to visit my country and my hometown’, he said.

Lord Triesman, who was a Minister of Foreign Affairs in the 1990s, expressed commitment to relaunch economic and commercial relations with the Caribbean nation.

He announced the celebration in Havana, at the end of the first semester of 2019, of a meeting of Cuba Initiative, one of the three organizations affiliated with the Caribbean Council.

In turn, the Cuban statesman thanked the courtesy by the members of this business committee to attend the meeting on Tuesday, which was held at a central London hotel.

During his speech, the head of State nation stressed that the founding of this institution marked the beginning of a different relationship between Cuba and the United Kingdom.

Diaz-Canel took advantage of the meeting to reiterate the Cuban government’s willingness to continue working for the development of the economic, commercial and cooperation ties with its British peer.

He stated that Cuba aspires a growth that guarantees the main social conquests achieved after the triumph of the 1959 Revolution, and denounced that the prolonged blockade imposed by the United States is the biggest hurdle to its development.

The Cuban president said that since President Donald Trump took office, the economic, financial and commercial siege against the Caribbean country worsened and there was a regression in the normalization process of the ties started by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

In this context, the statesman invited to increase the presence of British investors in sectors such as tourism, energy and the biotechnological and pharmaceutical industries, among others.