Cuba on Monday summoned the US head of mission in Havana to rail against "interfering conduct" even as Washington denied involvement in weekend protests it said were symptomatic of a "dire situation" in the communist nation.
On Sunday, Cubans staged rare street protests in the second-largest city Santiago de Cuba, Bayamo and other places against food and electricity shortages.
Battling its worst economic crisis in decades, worsened by US sanctions, Cuba has been experiencing a wave of blackouts since the start of March due to maintenance work on the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant, the island's largest.
The situation was worsened at the weekend by a shortage of fuel needed to generate electricity, leaving some areas without power for up to 14 hours a day.
The US embassy in Havana said on X it was aware of reports of "peaceful protests" and urged the Cuban government to "respect the human rights of the protestors and address the legitimate needs of the Cuban people."
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez responded by urging Washington not to "interfere in the country's internal affairs."
On Monday, Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio "formally transferred" to US charge d'affaires Benjamin Ziff Havana's "firm rejection of the interfering conduct and slanderous messages of the US government and its embassy" about Cuban "internal affairs."
The minister also pointed to Washington's "direct responsibility" for the "difficult economic situation that Cuba is going through," said the statement, referring to six decades of sanctions it said were "designed to destroy the economic capacity of the country."
In Washington, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said: "The United States is not behind these protests in Cuba and the accusation of that is absurd."
"I think what we are seeing is a reflection of the dire situation on the island," Patel told reporters.
"We urge the Cuban government to refrain from violence and unjust detentions and are calling on the authorities to respect the Cuban citizens' right to peaceful assembly," he said.
The Cuban statement said that if the United States had any "honest concern about the welfare of the Cuban population, it would remove Cuba from the arbitrary list of states that allegedly sponsor terrorism" to which it was added in 2021.
IOL