Statement from the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs

July 2, 2008

IN recent weeks, there has been an escalation of provocative actions organized and financed by the United States Interests Section in Havana. The USIS has increased its interventionist and illegal activities in our country, despite the fact that the Cuban government has repeatedly exposed its role as a mainstay of the U.S. government’s subversive policies and as the general headquarters of the internal counterrevolution. Some of the most recent actions, encouraged and directly coordinated by the USIS, include the following:

— The organization of a Father’s Day activity at the residence of the head of USIS, during which the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Cuban-American Carlos Gutierrez, co-chair of the commission charged with implementing the anti-Cuba Bush Plan, addressed a group of counterrevolutionary elements via videoconference.

— Several courses held at the USIS for counterrevolutionaries, self-proclaimed “journalists,” imparted via videoconference by professors from Florida International University, based in Miami, which receives official funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) specifically for that program.

— Personal attention from U.S. diplomatic officials, including the USIS chief, for counterrevolutionary ringleaders, whom they visit in their own homes and contact semi-secretly in order to give them instructions.

—The conveyance of direct instructions from USIS diplomatic personnel to mercenaries, so that they will step up their subversive actions, including inciting them to carry out provocative actions on public streets and symbolic places like the Plaza de la Revolución.

— The opportunities given to mercenary individuals to have permanent access to USIS Internet centers as well as being constantly supplied with money, cell phones, communications equipment, computers and counterrevolutionary propaganda, among others.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has confirmed information that the USIS is planning to organize other illegal activities, and is instigating its mercenaries in Cuba to carry out provocative actions in public streets around the 4th of July, which is Independence Day in the United States.

These activities also coincide with the end of Mr. Michael Parmly’s mission in Cuba and his definitive departure from our country. He is the head of the U.S. Interests Section, the man whose scandalous and illegal conduct was revealed this past May by the Cuban government, when it was proved that he — along with other U.S. diplomats — was connected with and directly participated in bringing money from Cuban-born terrorist Santiago Álvarez Fernández-Magriñá to counterrevolutionary factions in Cuba.

This escalation represents the most recent example of the desperation of the U.S. administration, which, frustrated by the repeated failure of its policy for isolating Cuba, is intensifying provocations and subversion.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs once again denounces the illegal conduct of the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba, which is not only a flagrant violation of the bilateral agreement that provided for the establishment of that Office, but Cuban laws and international norms endorsed by the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, to which the United States is a signatory.

This Ministry accuses the U.S. government of concocting and encouraging these and other counterrevolutionary provocations, which are an intrinsic part of its subversive policies and its strategy aimed at overthrowing the Cuban Revolution.

The Cuban government calls upon the U.S. government to answer for these and other actions, and demands a definitive end to the interventionist activities of the USIS encouraging, organizing, directing, financing and monitoring the internal counterrevolution.

The Cuban government clearly reiterates that it will not tolerate a continuation of these illegal provocations and actions, instigated by the U.S. administration through its diplomatic officials in Havana, and it holds the U.S. government responsible for any consequences resulting from its response.

Havana, July 2, 2008