Cuba reiterated this Saturday that “slanderous speculation continues” related to an alleged Chinese spy base in its territory, now based on statements released by various US media and international press agencies from which it is assured that the Asian government has been spying to the US from here about four years ago.
“Slanderous speculation continues, evidently promoted by certain media outlets to cause harm and alarm without observing minimum communication patterns and without providing data or evidence to support what they disseminate,” Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Carlos Fernández wrote on Twitter on Saturday. of Cossío.
Fernández de Cossío repeated that “Cuba’s response is the same as already stated” on Thursday.
Cuba denies the existence of an alleged agreement with China to open an espionage center
new information
The brief tweet from the Cuban Vice Foreign Minister responds to new information attributed to anonymous sources of the Bicen administration that refer to sustained Chinese espionage activity on the United States from the island, at least as far back as 2019.
According to comments from an official not authorized to comment publicly and on condition of anonymity, the american agency Associated Press (AP) reports that the Asian country would have had an espionage base for at least four years, “as part of Beijing’s attempts to improve its intelligence gathering capacity globally.”
For its part, the Spanish efe He said that “the White House declassified this Saturday information from its intelligence services” about “alleged espionage activities by China in Cuba.”
When Joe Biden arrived at the White House in January 2021, he received information that China was trying to expand its intelligence services around the world by setting up spy centers in Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.
Said efforts, according to this source, supposedly included “intelligence collection facilities” in Cuba, a term that can represent anything from centers with dozens of spies to a simple listening post equipped with an antenna.
Inaccurate information”
This “disclosure of information” occurs after the The Wall Street Journal published on Thursday that China and Cuba had reached an agreement to build a large spy center on the island, something that the Cuban Executive categorically denied.
He too Pentagon and the White House They described the information disseminated as “inaccurate”, although they did not elaborate too much on the matter.
Defense Department spokesman, Brigadier General Pat Ryder, noted thursday in a press conference that the newspaper report The Wall Street Journal Assuring that Cuba had signed a million-dollar agreement with China for the installation of this center “is inaccurate.”
“I have seen that press report, it is not accurate”, said that same day in a interview with MSNBC White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.
“What I can tell you is that we have been concerned since day one of this administration about China’s influence activities around the world; certainly in this hemisphere and in this region, we are watching this very, very closely,” he added.
Slanderous speculation continues, evidently promoted by certain media outlets to cause harm and alarm without observing minimum standards of communication and without providing data or evidence to support what they disseminate.
The answer of #Cuba is the same already declared. https://t.co/8rYxqush5M
— Carlos F. de Cossio (@CarlosFdeCossio) June 10, 2023
A few hours after the note from the wsjthe Chinese government accused the United States of “spreading rumors and slander”, which, according to statements by the spokesman for its Foreign Ministry, Wang Wenbin, is a “common tactic for the United States”.
“Slanders of this type have frequently been fabricated by US officials, apparently familiar with intelligence information, such as those referring to alleged acoustic attacks against US diplomatic personnel,” Fernández de Cossío had said at a press conference on Thursday.
