Washington accuses Cuba of encouraging dispute to paint it as a villain

Reuters, Afp, Arn and Prensa Latina

Newspaper La Jornada
Friday, May 20, 2022, p. 8

Washington. The government of Joe Biden yesterday accused Cuba of fueling the controversy over its possible exclusion from the Summit of the Americas, organized by the United States from June 6 to 10, to portray Washington as the villain and distract attention from Havana’s human rights record at the local level.

At a conference on Latin America, Kerri Hannan, deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, said that countries that have threatened not to come if Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua are not invited should attend or they would lose the opportunity to work with the United States. Joined.

The White House said it has not yet sent out invitations and declined to provide details. Brian Nichols, assistant secretary for Latin America and the Caribbean, noted in April that the three nations would likely be excluded by Do not respect the Democratic Charter of the Americas, a regional document for the defense of institutionality approved by the Organization of American States (OAS) two decades ago.

Hannan assured that “Cubans love this: receiving the attention they get for not attending and (…) they keep repeating the same thing.

Hours later, United States senators, encouraged by Democrat Bob Menéndez, chairman of the influential Committee on Foreign Relations, introduced a bill to guard the Democratic Charter of the Americas.

The legislation proposes a series of initiatives to strengthen Washington’s cooperation with the OAS, with the main objective of confronting the threats to democratic governance in the region.

In this context, the Biden administration seemed willing to renew its assessment that Cuba is among a handful of countries that do not cooperate fully with the United States in the fight against terrorismaccording to a draft of the US Federal Register signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, cited by Reuters.

The formal publication of the decision is scheduled for today, but Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez tweeted: Lacking pretexts for the effort to exclude countries of the region from the hemispheric summit, the United States once again resorts to slander by pointing out that Cuba does not cooperate sufficiently in the fight against terrorism….

In the draft, Blinken indicates: I hereby determine and certify to Congress that the following countries are not fully cooperating with United States counterterrorism efforts. In the document Cuba is placed together with Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela.

The notice, dated the 11th, was labeled as a public inspection document.