# AMISTAD # SOLIDARIDAD # CUBA #BLOQUEO #VIETNAM

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez held official talks on Monday with his Vietnamese counterpart, Le Hoai Trung, reaffirming the historic solidarity and cooperation between the two nations. Minister Rodríguez emphasized that the visit by his Vietnamese counterpart comes at a particularly complex time for Cuba, marked by the intensification of U.S. sanctions and their impact on the country’s development. He highlighted Vietnam as “a benchmark of its people’s heroic and extraordinary struggle for national independence and the construction of a much more beautiful homeland,” as well as an example of economic and social progress.

I cannot find a way to refer to the defense of the central role of the United Nations and the promotion of peace and development and the primary responsibility of the Security Council in maintaining international peace and security and its contribution to dialogue and the promotion of political solutions; without asking this Security Council to, realistically, at least try to fulfill its primary and supreme mandate regarding the military threat and energy blockade against Cuba; nor can I refrain from encouraging the United Nations General Assembly that, in any case, use with determination its extensive and decisive powers, its moral, legal, and democratic authority that the peoples have conferred upon it, in the situation of Cuba.

Recent statements made by some US Government officials speculate, without any evidence whatsoever, about the fact that the Government of Cuba could be involved in frauds targeting the US health care program Medicare in South Florida.  This is a new slander fabricated by anti-Cuban sectors in that country. Cuba has maintained a firm stance in rejection of this and other transnational crimes.  This is something well-known by the Government of the United States, which has exchanged and coordinated with the Cuban Government the implementation of several joint actions on terrorism, legal assistance, commercial security, illicit trafficking in drugs, alien smuggling and migration fraud, cyber-crimes, money laundering and financial crimes. However, as a rule, there has not been a reciprocal behavior on the part of the US authorities.