US slaps new sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela to pressure Maduro

MIAMI/WASHINGTON - The Trump administration on Wednesday imposed new sanctions and other punitive measures on Cuba and Venezuela, seeking to ratchet up US pressure on Havana to end its support for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Speaking to a Cuban exile group in Miami, US national security adviser John Bolton said the United States was targeting Cuba's military and intelligence services, including a military-owned airline, for additional sanctions and was tightening travel and trade restrictions against the island.

Bolton's speech followed the State Department's announcement on Wednesday that it was lifting a long-standing ban against US citizens filing lawsuits against foreign companies that use properties seized by Cuba's government since Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.

President Donald Trump's decision, which the State Department said could unleash hundreds of thousands of legal claims worth tens of billions of dollars, drew swift criticism from European and Canadian allies, whose companies have significant interests in Cuba.

The Cuban government, which could be hindered in its efforts to attract new foreign investment, denounced it as "an attack on international law."

Taking aim at Venezuela, Bolton said the United States was also imposing sanctions on the country's central bank, restricting US transactions and prohibiting access to dollars by an institution he described as crucial to keeping Maduro in power. Bolton also announced new sanctions on Nicaragua.

While accusing Cuba of propping up Maduro with its security forces in the country, Bolton also used the opportunity to issue a warning to "all external actors, including Russia," against deploying military assets to support the Venezuelan leader.

"The United States will consider such provocative actions a threat to international peace and security in the region," Bolton said, noting that Moscow recently sent in military flights carrying 35 tons of unknown cargo and a hundred military personnel.

However, Cuba appears unlikely to be budged by the Trump administration's demands to dump Maduro, a longtime ally of Havana, and Maduro has also shown little sign of losing the loyalty of the Venezuela military despite tough oil-related US sanctions on the OPEC member-nation.

"No one will rip the (fatherland) away from us, neither by seduction nor by force," Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel wrote on Twitter. "We Cubans do not surrender."

Reuters