Marco Rubio Criticizes Cuba as Colombian President Gustavo Petro Visits the Island - EUROPE SAYS
U. S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio andColombia’s outgoing president, Gustavo Petro. Credit: X:@SecRubio– @infopresidenciaJust as Colombia’s outgoing president, Gustavo Petro, was concluding his visit to Cuba. . .
U. S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio andColombia’s outgoing president, Gustavo Petro. Credit: X:@SecRubio– @infopresidenciaJust as Colombia’s outgoing president, Gustavo Petro, was concluding his visit to Cuba on his final official trip as head of state, U. S. Secretary of StateMarco Rubiointensified his criticism of the island’s regime. The coincidence of the two events summarizes the political moment the region is experiencing. Rubio identified Cuba as one of the main threats to U. S. national security, endorsed a recent report onCubawarning about intelligence and influence activities attributed to the Cuban regime, and asserted that Havana managed to infiltrate U. S. institutions for decades. “If you look at the history of espionage in the United States, Cuba is the only country that has consistently planted and embedded spies in our system without even paying them,” the secretary of state said on Saturday, August 1, during the Fox News program ‘My View with Lara Trump’. “A superpower of influence and espionage”: RubioFor Rubio, Cuba is “a failed state 90 miles off our shores that, in addition, is aligned with adversaries of the United States and represents a threat to our country’s national security. ”To support his statements, he recalled several cases of infiltration into intelligence agencies and argued that the Cuban regime also played a significant role in political influence operations both in Latin America and in the United States. “They are, in fact, a superpower of influence and espionage,” Rubio said on the program. “If you examine the history of espionage in the United States, Cuba is the only country that has systematically infiltrated and concealed spies within our system without even paying them. ”He cited as an example the case of Manuel Rocha, a former U. S. ambassador and former national security official, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 years in prison for acting as a secret agent for Cuba for decades. He also referred to Ana Belen Montes, an analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), who was discovered leaking U. S. secrets to Cuba. According to Rubio, her case represents one of the “greatest intelligence failures” and potentially the most serious infiltration in U. S. history. The secretary also told Fox News that Cuba uses networks of protesters across the country to advocate for different causes in order to pressure U. S. lawmakers. “If you look across all of Latin America, every leftist communist insurgency that has destabilized governments throughout the region, every single one of them over the last 40 or 50 years has found its support, its assistance, and in many cases its origin, in a Cuban influence operation,” he said. But he went further, claiming that the unrest directed against U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as protests in support of the armed Islamist group Hamas and other activist movements in the country, are coordinated by the Cuban regime. “There is nothing organic about it. It is funded, it is organized, and Cuba is part of that network and, in some cases, a fundamental part of it,” Rubio added. “And it is a network they will use as a weapon against us, and they openly talk about how they will use that network to pressure American lawmakers. ”“From Cuba I want to oppose a war in the Caribbean”: PetroThe U. S. secretary of state’s statements came at a time of growing tension between Washington and Havana,amid which President Petro’s visit to the island took place. On the same day Rubio made those remarks, the Colombian president concluded his visit with his Cuban counterpart, Miguel Diaz-Canel. His trip began on July 31 to fulfill several high-level commitments, including a meeting with Diaz-Canel, one ofPetro‘s few allies in the region. “From Cuba I want to oppose a war in the Caribbean. The missiles fired into the Caribbean Sea against drug traffickers killed humble people, as U. S. intelligence agencies have just confirmed. They achieved nothing, but they did kill 261 people, including, apparently, 50 Colombians,” Petro wrote about his trip to the island. “Neither missiles, nor invasion, nor blockade are solutions to humanity’s problems,” the president added, maintaining the same line of support he has shown toward regimes such as those of Cuba and Venezuela.