US President Joe Biden faced a double crisis near his national border on Thursday. He declared that Cuba is “a failed country” and said that he is not currently on his agenda to send US troops into Haiti.

The protesters have demonstration In Cuba since Sunday, people have been angry about the shortage of basic commodities, the interruption of electricity and the Internet, restrictions on civil liberties, and the government’s handling of the surge in COVID-19 infections. The Biden administration is reviewing the decades-long US trade embargo, exacerbating this difficulty.

Biden said at a joint press conference held by the White House and German Chancellor Merkel on Thursday: “Unfortunately, Cuba is a failed country and suppresses its citizens.”

As Republicans and Biden’s Democratic colleagues called for the restoration of Internet services in Cuba, Biden said that his government is investigating this.

“They cut off access to the Internet. We are considering whether we have the technical capabilities to restore this access,” Biden said.

At the same time, after President Jovenel Moise stepped down, there were calls for the United States to send troops to Haiti. Shot In the early morning of July 7, his home in Port-au-Prince was described by the Haitian authorities as a group of assassins, including 26 Colombians and two Haitian Americans.

The assassinations plunged this already troubled Caribbean country into chaos, as gang violence surged, causing the displacement of thousands of people and hindering the economic activities of the poorest countries in the Americas.

Biden made it clear that for security purposes, the United States “only sends the US Marine Corps to our embassy.”

“The idea of ??sending U.S. troops to Haiti is currently not on the agenda.”

Biden meets Merkel

Biden welcomed Merkel to the White House on Thursday to discuss the differences between Russia and China, as the leaders of the two countries seek to strengthen the relationship suffered under the leadership of former President Donald Trump.

The United States and Germany are the main allies of NATO. Biden and Merkel have known and cooperated for many years.

But the two governments have differences on a series of difficult issues, including Beixi 2 A pipeline from Russia to Germany is being built under the Baltic Sea, and Washington fears that this will hurt Ukraine and increase Europe’s dependence on Russian gas.

They also disagree on cooperation with China on commercial projects, restrictions on travel from Europe to the United States, and Germany’s opposition to temporary patent exemptions aimed at accelerating the production of COVID-19 vaccines.

On the North Stream 2 pipeline, “they did not resolve their differences. Specifically, the United States participated in this meeting knowing that it would become a friction point between the two leaders, and they did not seem to find any common ground,” Al Jazeera White House reporter Kimberly Halkert said.

Merkel told reporters that Europe’s largest economy, Germany, has a different view of this pipeline from that of the United States. But she said that Berlin views Ukraine as a transit country, which obviously means she believes that even if the pipeline is completed, natural gas should still flow through Ukraine.

Merkel said that if Russia does not fulfill its pipeline commitments to Ukraine, Europe can adopt “multiple means” including sanctions.

Russia said that the $11 billion pipeline led by the national energy company Gazprom and its Western partners will be completed later this year.

Biden said that on projects such as Beixi 2, “good friends can disagree”, and both leaders asked their teams to study practical measures that these countries can take if Ukraine’s energy security is weakened.

Biden, 78, and Merkel, 66, agree on a wider range of issues. Both want to strengthen the transatlantic relationship that has been lost due to Trump’s frequent and sharp criticism of close US allies.

Merkel, who has been Chancellor since 2005, plans to withdraw from the German government after the national election in September, which means that she is likely to be seen as a “lame duck” in the last few months of her administration.

Polls show that she Christian Democratic Party It is prepared to take the lead in forming a government after the election, but it is not clear which parties will be included in the coalition.

Biden’s Democrats have a small majority in the US Congress, which may disappear in the 2022 congressional elections.

Merkel’s White House visit-this is the first visit by a European leader since Biden took office in January-shows that the United States is trying to compensate allies that have been frequently attacked during Trump’s administration.