HAVANA, Cuba (AFP) —Washington piled pressure on Cuba’s communist authorities Tuesday, to allow free market reforms as the impoverished island scrambled to recover from a nationwide electricity blackout.

Cuba, meanwhile, said it was open to broad talks with the United States (US) and allowing more investment, but would not discuss changing its political system.

Both the US and Cuban presidents, Donald Trump and Miguel Diaz-Canel, have acknowledged discussions between the two countries as Cuba faces major economic problems, including a nationwide blackout Monday.

Trump has said that he expects Cuba to reach an unspecified deal quickly with him, but has also boasted that he will have “the honour of taking Cuba” after he attacked its ally Venezuela as well as Iran.

Tanieris Dieguez, Cuba’s deputy chief of mission in Washington, told AFP that the two neighbouring countries “have a lot of things to put on the table” but that neither should ask the other to change its government.

“Nothing related with our political system, nothing with our political model — our constitutional model — is part of the negotiations, and never will it be part of that,” she said.

“The only thing that Cuba asks for any conversation [on] is respect to our sovereignty and to our right to self-determination.”

The New York Times, quoting unnamed US officials, said that the Trump administration has called for Cuba to sack Diaz-Canel, who is seen as resistant to change.

The Cuban envoy said that Havana was open to further US investment, but that the issue was the trade embargo imposed by the United States almost continuously since 1959.

“We are open to receive any American interests, businessmen, or whatever,” Dieguez said.

Dieguez said the cut-off of oil imports by the US had knock-on effects, including by impeding the transport and storage of temperature-sensitive medical supplies. She said that more than 3,000 children have gone without vaccinations in a country that has long prided itself on universal medical coverage.

“It’s collective punishment,” she said.

Cuba lost Venezuela as its chief regional ally and oil supplier this January after a US military operation to topple Venezuela’s socialist leader Nicolas Maduro.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has previously blamed Cuba’s communist system for the country’s economic problems.

Cuba’s authorities are under increasingly crushing pressure, with Washington openly stating it wants to end the nearly seven-decades-old US stand-off with the one-party communist State.

The total electricity breakdown on Monday underscored the parlous state of the economy. Power was restored to two-thirds of the country early Tuesday, including to 45 per cent of the capital Havana, which is home to 1.7 million people.

Adding another scare, a 5.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Cuba early Tuesday. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.