A day after Bolivia suspended diplomatic relations with Cuba, Havana accused its interim government of having sought to sabotage bilateral ties ever since it took power last year, partly under pressure from US President Donald Trump’s administration.
Cuba was a key ally of former Bolivian president Evo Morales — who resigned amid a political crisis and protests in November last year — and has supported his assertion that he was toppled in a foreign-backed “coup.”
Conservative interim Bolivian President Jeanine Anez has tried to align the country more closely with Trump’s administration.
“The acting authorities unfurled a ferocious campaign of lies against Cuba ... in particular against the Cuban medical cooperation, inciting violence against our staff,” the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Saturday.
“It is not casual that the facts described here coincide with a brutal, politically motivated US campaign against the international medical cooperation Cuba provides to dozens of countries,” it said.
US officials had, since the departure of Morales, “applied pressure on Bolivia to impose a deterioration in relations with Cuba,” the ministry said.
The US Department of State was not immediately available for comment.
Cuba’s health service is the country’s most important hard currency earner, sending more than 50,000 health workers to more than 60 countries.
Cuba terminated its medical mission to Bolivia in November, saying Bolivian officials were fostering violence against about 700 doctors by claiming they were instigating rebellion.
“There have been a number of accusations that Cuban citizens have been involved in these aggressive acts that have tormented our country in recent days,” the Bolivian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said earlier that month.
The spat was revived on Wednesday, when Anez said that Havana kept 80 percent of the payments Bolivia made for the work of Cuban doctors in the country.
Cuban foreign ministry denied this, saying on Saturday that from 2006 to 2012, Havana had actually covered all the costs of medical cooperation with Bolivia, at more than US$200 million per year.
It was from then that Bolivia started paying for the medical services due to its improved economy.
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