Cuba harassing US with Havana power cut: official

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba has cut electricity to the U.S.
diplomatic mission in Havana for the last week, a U.S. official
said on Monday, and Washington said the Castro government was
trying to harass it.

“On Monday, June 5, at approximately 3 a.m., electricity to
the main building of the United States Interests Section
(USINT) in Havana, Cuba was cut off,” a statement issued on
Monday by mission spokesperson Drew Blakeney said.

Requests to the Cuban government to restore power have gone
unanswered, and the mission operates on generator power, the
statement said.

In Washington, the United States complained on Monday the
cutoff was bullying but vowed to continue business as usual at
the site.

“This is the same type of harassment that the Cuban people
have had to live with on a daily basis,” State Department
spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

McCormack, who said water supply was periodically reduced
too, added that the power cutoff was probably aimed at trying
to thwart the United States from providing Cubans with
information about the world.

Tension indeed began mounting in January when the United
States turned on a streaming message board running along the
6th floor of the building to send news and political messages
into the night.

A furious President Fidel Castro denounced the move as a
“gross provocation” and marched a million people by the
building. Then construction workers tore up the parking lot to
mount huge flags that partially block the ticker from view.

Cuban officials were not immediately available for comment.

Blakeney’s statement said the Castro government’s “latest
harassment” includes refusing to allow the mission to import
vehicles, preventing the hiring of Cuban personnel to work in
maintenance, construction and other capacities; intruding into
diplomats’ homes, and failing to grant the majority of official
U.S. government visa requests for personnel being assigned to
work in Havana.

Diplomatic relations between the two countries were broken
off soon after Cuba’s 1959 revolution and U.S. sanctions were
slapped on the Communist country. Interests Sections were
established to handle consular and other activities in
Washington and Havana in the late 1970s.