Cuba hits back at ‘slanderous’ US claims that China has had a spy base on the island since 2019




CUBA has hit back at further claims that there has been a Chinese spy base on the island since at least 2019.

An unnamed United States official briefed reporters that Washington believes that China has been using the Caribbean island as a base for intelligence gathering for at least the last four years.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the US intelligence community has been aware of China's spying from Cuba and a larger effort to set up intelligence-gathering operations around the globe for some time.

But Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio hit back at the briefing in a Twitter post on Saturday.

Mr de Cossio wrote: “The slanderous speculation continues, evidently promoted by certain media to cause harm and alarm without observing minimum patterns of communication and without providing data or evidence to support what they disseminate.”

MORNINGSTAR UK CPBB

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that China and Cuba had reached an agreement in principle to build an electronic eavesdropping station on the island.

Without providing evidence, the White House called the report inaccurate but added that Chinese spying from Cuba was not a new development.