Irked by the accusations levelled by the US Secretary of State Antony J Blinken about the presence of a Chinese spy base in Cuba, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, the foreign minister of the island nation, has condemned the statements by terming them as false.
Stating that Cuba’s standing on this subject is unequivocal, he said the allegations made by Blinken were a pretext to maintain the economic blockade against the island nation.
Parilla said that the US has been exerting maximum pressure in recent years, a move which has been increasingly rejected by the international community and inside the US. The rejection includes the demand to remove Cuba from the arbitrary list of “States Sponsors of Terrorism”.
Parilla firmly stated that Cuba is not a threat to the US or any other country. However, the US implements a policy that threatens and punishes the entire Cuban population on a daily basis.
Earlier, speaking to Latin news agency Prensa Latina, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Wang Wenbin had slammed the US’s allegations and called it self-contradictory.
“Over the past few days, we have seen self-conflicting comments from US officials and media on the so-called allegation of China building “spy facilities” in Cuba. This is another example of ‘the US negating the US’”, Wenbin said.
“What is true can never be false, and what is false can never be true. No matter how the US tries with slanders and smears, it will not succeed in driving a wedge between two true friends, China and Cuba, nor can it cover up its deplorable track record of indiscriminate mass spying around the world”, he added.
The US has imposed sanctions on the island since 1959 when the communist guerillas under Fidel Castro overthrew the government of Fulgencio Batista, who was a protégé of the US. The Cuban government and several other countries around the world have been opposing the sanctions, terming them as unjust.
“The US has imposed and owns tens of military bases in our region and also maintains, against the will of the Cuban people, a military base in the territory that it illegally occupies in the province of Guantánamo. We are witnessing a new disinformation operation, similar to the many others in the United States throughout its long history of hostility against our country,” said Parilla.
