WASHINGTON (AP) — Recent U.S. sanctions targeting Cuba’s leadership and the indictment of former President Raúl Castro are a “pretext” for the Trump administration to persuade the American people to support a military intervention, Cuba’s top diplomat to the United States told The Associated Press.In an interview on Tuesday, Ambassador Lianys Torres Rivera repeated accusations against the Trump administration made by other Cuban officials, including the foreign minister and the president, and complained bitterly that the U.S. is targeting Cuban civilians with its decades-old embargo and new blockade of energy shipments to the island.“The sanctions against our leaders, we see as a pretext to make the American people think we are a threat,” she said at Cuba’s embassy in Washington. “We are not a threat to the U.S., and we don’t want confrontation.”
Torres Rivera, who holds the formal title of chargé d’affaires, described the situation as “a war without bombs.” She said efforts to change Cuba’s government by coercion or force would be met by fierce resistance.“Raúl is sacred,” she said of the indictment by a federal grand jury last month of Castro. The 95-year-old former president faces conspiracy and murder charges related to the 1996 shootdown of two unarmed civilian planes operated by the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue while he was serving as Cuba’s defense minister.
