Washington – China has reached a secret agreement with Cuba to place an electronic listening facility on the island, located 100 miles from Florida, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, citing US officials familiar with classified information.
Such a facility would allow Beijing to collect electronic communications from the southeastern United States, which is home to numerous military bases, as well as monitor ship traffic, the newspaper reported.
The countries have reached an agreement in principle, the officials said, and China will pay Cuba “several billion dollars” to enable the listening station, according to the Journal.
“I have seen that report and it is inaccurate,” said John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council. However, in a statement he qualified that position by stating that “we are very aware of the efforts of the People’s Republic of China to invest in infrastructure around the world that may have military purposes, including in this hemisphere, and we have spoken about them many times.” ”.
“We are closely monitoring it, taking countermeasures, and are confident that we can meet all of our security commitments at home, in the region, and around the world,” he added.
reactions
The Chinese and Cuban embassies in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, in the first reaction from Havana, former Cuban ambassador to Washington José R. Cabañas rejected the newspaper’s ad.
“Sorry guys, they still haven’t recovered from the ‘sonic boom’ fiasco and are already trying to demonize Cuba again. Aren’t you embarrassed from time to time?” he wrote in a tweet.
The version has caused alarm in the Government of President Joe Biden, according to the newspaper, for posing a new threat in the vicinity of the neighboring country.
The agreement comes at a time when Washington and Beijing are taking tentative steps to defuse tensions that escalated after a suspected high-altitude Chinese spy balloon crossed the United States before the military shot it down off the East Coast in February.
“Cuba’s threat to the United States is not only real, it is much worse than this,” Senator Marco Rubio said on Twitter.
An injection of liquidity would be welcome in Cuba, where inflation, fuel shortages, plummeting agricultural production and a lack of liquidity are hurting the economy and continue to fuel discontent on the communist-ruled island.
Information about plans for a station in Cuba has been gathered in recent weeks and was compelling, the Journal reported. The officials said it would allow China to carry out signals intelligence, including emails, phone calls and satellite transmission.
The headquarters of the United States Central Command is based in Tampa, Florida. Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg, the largest US military base, is based in North Carolina.
Source: Ambito
