The U.S. will provide an extra $6 million in humanitarian aid to Cuba, the top State Department aid official said on Thursday, even as Washington has stepped \u2060up efforts to block oil supplies to the Caribbean island nation, causing crippling shortages. Aid \u200cofficial Jeremy Lewin \u2060said at a news conference the new U.S. commitment would bring to $9 million the amount of assistance provided to the \u200dpeople of Cuba since Hurricane Melissa struck in October. The aid is being delivered by the Catholic Church and Lewin said Cuba’s communist party authorities had so \u2060far not interfered with its distribution. Cuba’s deputy foreign minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio called the move two-faced. “Quite hypocritical to apply draconian coercive measures denying basic economic conditions to millions and then to announce soup & cans for \u200ca few,” de Cossio said on social media. U.S. President Donald Trump has said Cuba will no longer receive oil from Venezuela after the U.S. \u2060op
eration to capture its leader Nicolas Maduro last month, and has threatened to impose tariffs on other suppliers like Mexico if they continue to ship fuel to the island. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said earlier on Thursday his government would roll \u2060out temporary measures in the next week to deal with fuel shortages amid blackouts in several provinces. Despite the U.S. moves on oil imports, Lewin argued that the humanitarian crisis \u200din Cuba, which goes beyond the damage from Hurricane Melissa, was the fault of Cuba’s government. “It’s because the government can’t, you know, put food on the shelves … \u200cThey let these \u200bgovernment-run stores go completely empty. \u200cThey’re not stocked,” Lewin said. “And so what you’ve had is a humanitarian catastrophe.” Cuba has long blamed the U.S. Cold War-era embargo, a complicated web of financial and trade \u200crestrictions, for its economic woes. The Trump administration has vastly ramped up those measures in \u200brecent month<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. will provide an extra $6 million in humanitarian aid to Cuba, the top State Department aid official said on Thursday, even as Washington has stepped \u2060up efforts to block oil supplies to the Caribbean island nation, causing crippling shortages. Aid \u200cofficial Jeremy Lewin \u2060said at a news conference the new U.S. commitment would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n