Cuba said today the expulsion of 14 of its diplomats from the United States showed the Bush administration has embarked on an aggressive course of confrontation with the island's communist-run government.
The Cuban Foreign Ministry said the expulsion of its envoys, seven at the UN mission in New York and seven in Washington, was an escalation of diplomatic tensions aimed at the closure of the low-level interests offices the two foes maintain in the absence of formal diplomatic relations.
But a ministry statement said Cuba would not give in to "provocation" and announced no Cold War-style retaliatory expulsions of American diplomats from Havana.
Yesterday, the United States ordered the 14 diplomats to leave the country in the largest single expulsion of Cuban envoys in four decades. The State Department said they had engaged in "unacceptable activities," a diplomatic euphemism for spying.
The expulsions marked a deepening in Washington's feud with Cuba since a crackdown on US-backed dissidents by President Fidel Castro's government and Havana's opposition to the war in Iraq. They came a week after Washington sharply criticized Cuba's re-election to the UN Human Rights Commission at a time when rights groups are charging Havana with increased abuses.
"The expulsion of 14 Cuban diplomats is an irrational act of revenge by the U.S. government against Cuba," said the ministry statement published on the front-page of the ruling Communist Party daily Granma.
"The US government has shown, once again, that it has openly embarked on a course of provocation and interference in Cuba," the statement said.
Tensions between Washington and Havana have been mounting for a year since President George W. Bush announced last May 20 that he was stepping up US support for Castro's opponents in Cuba.