MIAMI: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that Cuba accepted an offer of $100 million in aid but that it was unclear if Washington would agree to Havana\u2019s terms.<\/p>\n
Cuba has publicly only said that it was reviewing the offer made by Rubio and tensions have risen after the United States on Wednesday indicted the country\u2019s influential former president Raul Castro on murder charges.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey say they\u2019ve accepted it. We\u2019ll see if that means it\u201d will work out, Rubio told reporters in his home city of Miami as he left for a NATO meeting in Sweden.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not going to do humanitarian aid that falls into the hands of their military company that they have. And then they take that stuff and they sell it at the dollar stores and put the money in their pocket,\u201d Rubio said.<\/p>\n
Rubio, a Cuban-American and vociferous critic of the communist government in Havana, said that the United States was hoping to avoid the use of force.<\/p>\n
The indictment in Miami of the 94-year-old former president over a 1996 downing of two aircraft raised speculation that President Donald Trump could use the charges as a pretext to attack the island and seize him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president always has the option to do whatever it takes to support and protect the national interest and national security of the United States,\u201d Rubio said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat said, our preference is always a diplomatic solution,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But Rubio also made clear he believed Cuba posed a threat.<\/p>\n
\u201cCuba not only has weapons that they\u2019ve acquired from Russia and China over the years, but they also host (a) Russia and Chinese intelligence presence in their country, not far from where we\u2019re standing right now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo Cuba has always posed a national security threat to the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MIAMI: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that Cuba accepted an offer of $100 million in aid but that it was unclear if Washington would agree to Havana\u2019s terms. Cuba has publicly only said that it was reviewing the offer made by Rubio and tensions have risen after the United States on Wednesday …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":98122,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98123,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98117\/revisions\/98123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}