Sunday, June 02, 2013

Statement From the Cuban Foreign Ministry on Continuing U.S. State Department Provocations

Havana. May 31, 2013

Statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

ON May 30, the U.S. State Department repeated its unwonted accusation that Cuba is "a state sponsor of international terrorism."

Once again, this shameful decision has been taken deliberately with no truthful basis, ignoring the wide consensus and explicit demand from many sectors of U.S. society and the international community for an end to this injustice.

The sole objective of this discredited anti-Cuba exercise is to try and justify the maintenance of the blockade, a failed policy condemned worldwide. It is also an attempt to please a steadily decreasing anti-Cuba group desperately propping up a policy which no longer has any basis and is not even in the national interest of the United States, the majority of its population and of Cuban émigrés resident in the country.

The United States government insists on maintaining this arbitrary and unilateral designation, in spite of the total collapse of the ridiculous accusations and feeble arguments which it has traditionally utilized in recent years as an excuse for it, such as the presence in Cuba of fugitives from U.S. justice, none of whom in fact have been accused of terrorism. It also alleges that Cuba has taken in Basque members of ETA, ignoring the fact that this was in response to a request from the governments involved. It also notes that members of the Colombian guerrilla movement are living in the country, an absurd accusation given that, since 2011, Cuba has been a sponsor of the peace process in Colombia.

Cuban territory has never been and never will be utilized to harbor terrorists of any origin, nor for the organization, financing or perpetration of acts of terrorism against any country in the world, including the United States. The Cuban government unequivocally rejects and condemns any act of terrorism, anywhere, under any circumstances and whatever the alleged motivation might be.

On the contrary, the United States government employs state terrorism as a weapon against countries which defy its interests, provoking deaths in civilian populations. It has used drone aircraft to perpetrate extra-judicial executions of alleged terrorists, including U.S. citizens, resulting in the death of hundreds of innocent civilians.

Historically, the United States has been the refuge of self-confessed terrorists and murderers of Cuban origin and, to this day, is harboring Luis Posada Carriles, the mastermind of the first act of terrorism perpetrated on civil aviation in the Western Hemisphere, which provoked an explosion aboard a Cubana de Aviación aircraft off the coast of Barbados on October 6, 1976, and the death of its 73 passengers, including the national youth fencing team. While Posada is living in freedom and tranquility in Miami, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero y Fernando González remain unjustly incarcerated for fighting against terrorism in the United States, accused of crimes they did not commit.

For years, Cuba has suffered the consequences of acts of terrorism organized, financed and perpetrated from U.S. territory, with 3,478 persons killed and 2,099 left with disabilities. The Cuban government does not afford the government of the United States the least moral authority to judge it.

In 2002, the government of Cuba proposed to its U.S. counterpart the adoption of a bilateral agreement to confront terrorism, an offer which it reiterated in 2012, without having received any response.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly rejects the utilization for political ends of an issue as sensitive as international terrorism, and demands an end to this shameful designation, an offense to the Cuban people, the only objective of which is to attempt to justify the anachronistic and cruel blockade of Cuba, and which is to the discredit of the United States government itself.

Havana, May 30, 2013

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