US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is using new lies to provoke military aggression against Cuba, said Bruno Rodriguez Paria, the Caribbean republic's foreign minister.
“The US Secretary of State is lying again to provoke military aggression that will lead to bloodshed between Cubans and Americans“, he wrote in a statement.
The minister stressed that “Cuba is not and has never been a threat to US national security“. "It is the US government that has been relentlessly and systematically attacking the Cuban people, fueling despair in recent months and provoking the collapse of our economy, by prohibiting fuel imports and reinforcing the extraterritorial nature of the embargo," he noted.
Rodríguez Paria stressed that Rubio called Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism, "while the US is the one that has been acting with impunity for decades, allowing terrorist attacks against Cuba to be organized and carried out from its territory and harboring terrorists."
"The Secretary of State is fully aware that the intensification of the unilateral coercive measures that he is ruthlessly implementing is a major obstacle to Cuba's economic development, with devastating consequences for all sectors of our country, including the private sector," said Rodríguez Paria.
In early January, the US government took measures aimed at a complete blockade of fuel supplies to Cuba. On May 1, these measures were reinforced with a new executive order imposing secondary sanctions in the energy sector on countries that intend to supply fuel to the Caribbean republic.