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President-elect threatens to end US-Cuba thaw without 'better deal'

Trump has only briefly addressed the Cuban revolutionary's demise, in an inelegant tweet early Saturday: "Fidel Castro is dead!"

Donald Trump will become the 45th US President after he is sworn in on January 20

"If Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate deal," Trump said on Twitter.

Trump's hard line came just a day after his senior advisors promised to strike a "better deal" with the communist-ruled island after former leader Fidel Castro's death, without stating how this might affect the historic rapprochement begun under US President Barack Obama.

While prominent Republicans have blasted Castro as a murderous tyrant since his death Friday, no one close to Trump had directly threatened to end the political opening announced in 2014 by Obama and his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro -- until Trump's Monday morning tweet.

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His team has said the outgoing Democratic administration made too many concessions to Havana -- notably by easing the 1962 US economic embargo -- without receiving enough concessions in areas like human rights, democracy and the move toward a free-market economy.

"We've got to have a better deal," Trump's chief of staff, Reince Priebus, said on Fox News Sunday.

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