Cuba Rejects Inclusion on US List of State Sponsors of Terrorism
News from Cuba | Friday, 6 August 2010
from the Cuban News Agency
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla strongly rejected on Thursday the inclusion of Cuba on a US list of state sponsors of terrorism.
"I strongly reject the inclusion of Cuba on the list of states sponsoring international terrorism. It is a politically motivated act of injustice and hypocrisy," said Rodriguez after meeting with his Brazilian counterpart Celso Amorin in Brasilia.
"Only three hours ago I let them know of Cuba's willingness to hold a dialogue with the United States and to negotiate pending bilateral issues always respecting the principle of sovereignty and upon reciprocal bases," he noted.
"However, only three hours later they make this announcement that deals with one of the most irrational aspects of the US government's policy against Cuba. They usually publish this list in April. Why did they wait for three months?" the Cuban diplomat wondered.
Rodriguez added that he would like to see a report from the US State Department about the death of civilians and other atrocities carried out by the United States in Afghanistan recorded in thousands of classified documents that have recently been revealed to the world public opinion.
"The US government deliberately lied; they have all the information confirming that those who have written this spurious report lied deliberately for political reasons, and they act against the interests of the American and the Cuban people, for purely domestic political reasons," he pointed out.
The Cuban Foreign Minister said that no other country has fought terrorism as much as Cuba and added that as a result of terrorist attacks organized against Cuba from the United States nearly 3,000 Cubans have died and another 2,000 were disabled.
He recalled that the authors of the mid-air bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 -in which all 73 people on board were killed-, international and self-confessed terrorists Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, live as free men in the United States under the protection of the US government.
The Cuban diplomat said the United States maintains a double standard on terrorism because five Cuban anti-terrorists remain unjustly imprisoned there while Posada Carriles, Bosch and other confessed terrorists against Cuba remain at large.
