Caribbean News Now reports that the Cuban Foreign Ministry (MINREX) has described as an open provocation a meeting of senior officials from the US State Department with a group of Cuban “mercenaries” in Havana during their visit for a new round of migration talks between Cuba and the United States last Wednesday.
In an official statement, MINREX, voicing its rejection of any attempt by the US representatives to use this official visit to carry out offensive or disrespectful activities in Cuba, described the meeting as a “flagrant violation of the principles and international norms that govern relations among states and an offence to the Cuban people that have faced the hostile policy and blockade of the government of the United States for more than 50 years.” The ministry expressed the Cuban government’s willingness “to dialogue with the US government about any topics on respectful and equal terms, without detriment to the independence, sovereignty and self-determination of our country.”
The statement noted that “The head of the US delegation, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs of the State Department, Roberta Jacobson, accompanied by Julissa Reynoso, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Central America, the Caribbean and Cuba; Peter Brennan, head of the Office of Cuban Affairs; and Jonathan Farrar, head of the US Interests Section in Havana, attended the meeting with the group of mercenaries, whose activities against the Cuban constitutional order are ordered and financed by the Government of the United States. [. . .] This action once again reaffirms that there are no changes in the US Government’s policy of subversion and interference in Cuba’s domestic affairs and that its priority continues to be to encourage internal counterrevolution and to foster destabilization activities, while it reinforces its economic, financial and trade blockade.”
It concluded by stating that Cuba “will not tolerate any interference by the United States in Cuba’s domestic affairs and we will use all available legal and political mechanisms to face it.”
For original article, see http://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/headline-Cuba-says-it-will-not-tolerate-US-interference-in-its-domestic-affairs-4477.html
Matt Wuerker’s “The Ironic Curtain” from http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2009/04/tear_down_this/
