Top US diplomat in Cuba funnels funds to dissidents: Havana
4 hours ago
HAVANA (AFP) — The top US diplomat in Cuba personally has served as a conduit of funds delivered to dissidents aiming to oust Cuba's communist government, Havana charged Monday.
Cuba for years has accused the United States regularly of supporting dissidents in the only communist one-party regime in the Americas.
But it has never backed up its charges with detailed public accusations and purported evidence, a tense twist under the new government of President Raul Castro, 76.
Josefina Vidal, Cuba's top diplomat for issues related to the United States, told a news conference that Michael Parmly -- chief of the US Interests Section, a quasi-embassy as the countries do not have full diplomatic ties -- personally supported an alleged dissident funding network, as a "common courier."
Vidal charged the United States with working with an anti-Castro Cuban activist in Miami, Santiago Alvarez, whom she said was in jail in the United States for illegal arms possession but nonetheless was able to organize the operation providing funding and material support to dissidents in Cuba.
Alvarez "manages to get things together to send money and material support to mercenaries in Cuba with the support of the chief of the US Interests Section in Havana, Mr. Michael Parmly," Vidal charged.
"It is all the more outrageous and scandalous' that US diplomats "work as emissaries or links between a terrorist and mercenaries," Vidal said.
"One has to wonder if the government of the United States, which has made fighting terrorism the center of its foreign policy, is aware that its top diplomat in Havana is collaborating with a notorious terrorist," she said.
Vidal ruled out the idea of US diplomatic reprisals, and said Washington should "take measures to correct the behavior of its diplomats in Havana."
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Marta Beatriz Roque making a statement
with former U.S. Interests section head,
James Cason looking on from the doorway.
Marta Beatriz Roque
Santiago Álvarez