Washington, Jul 11 (EFE).- The United States responded on Tuesday to Cuba that it has the right to move assets to its Guantánamo military base, after the island’s government denounced that Washington sent a nuclear-powered submarine there.
“As the Pentagon has already said, we will continue to fly, navigate and move military assets where international law allows,” said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller at a press conference.
Miller thus responded to the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which denounced on Tuesday the entry of a US nuclear-powered submarine into Guantánamo Bay (eastern Cuba), where the United States maintains a disputed military base, and described it as an “escalation provocative”.
“The presence there of a nuclear submarine at this moment forces us to question what is the military reason for the fact in this peaceful region of the world, against what objective is it directed and what strategic purpose is it pursuing,” said the Cuban Foreign Ministry.
The base has housed a prison since January 11, 2002, when the first group of prisoners from Afghanistan arrived, where most of them accused of terrorism remain to this day, although some have never been tried.
In the same press conference, Miller explained that the United States keeps Cuba on the list of countries that sponsor terrorism because “it does not yet meet the requirements to leave” the list.
The inclusion of Cuba on the list, which entails several sanctions against the island, was one of the last decisions made by the Government of Donald Trump (2017-2021) before leaving power and that the Joe Biden Administration has not reversed.
The United States recently denounced the presence since 2019 of a Chinese spy station in Cuba, something that both Havana and Beijing have emphatically denied.
This same Tuesday marks the 2nd anniversary of the protests of July 11, 2021 in Cuba, the largest in decades, which left more than 1,000 arrests and hundreds of sentenced.
The Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, demanded this Tuesday in a statement the release of the “political prisoners unjustly detained” in those demonstrations. EFE
FUENTE: EFE
