Cuba’s top diplomat in Washington accused the Trump administration of using expanded sanctions and a high-profile criminal indictment as a pretext to rally the American public behind a military intervention, in an interview published Tuesday by The Associated Press.
Ambassador Lianys Torres Rivera said at Cuba’s embassy in the U.S. capital that “the sanctions against our leaders, we see as a pretext to make the American people think we are a threat.” She added: “We are not a threat to the U.S., and we don’t want confrontation.” Torres’s remarks repeated accusations made by President Miguel Díaz-Canel and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez.
The United States in May indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro on charges tied to the 1996 shootdown of two civilian planes operated by the exile group Brothers to the Rescue, in which four people were killed. The Trump administration also widened sanctions targeting Cuban military and security officials and family of Cuba’s founding revolutionary leaders.
Torres complained that the U.S. embargo, imposed in 1962 and tightened successively by successive administrations, together with a newly announced blockade on energy shipments, is harming ordinary Cubans rather than the government. Torres complained that the economic measures—the decades-old embargo together with a newly announced blockade of energy shipments—are worsening the conditions of Cuban citizens.
The interview came against a backdrop of rising U.S.-Cuba tensions. President Trump has repeatedly threatened possible military action against the island government since April. In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed skepticism that diplomacy could resolve the standoff. The Pentagon has said it is not planning imminent military operations, but has not ruled out a future intervention.
The Cuban government has responded by mobilizing its population through a signature campaign and by rejecting the legitimacy of the U.S. indictment against Castro. Torres’s remarks on Tuesday were the most forceful direct U.S.-facing denial that Cuba constitutes a military threat.
She spoke at the Cuban embassy in Washington, the same site where earlier Cuban officials have delivered statements rebuffing Washington’s pressure campaign.