CUBA/FOREIGN POLICY/STATE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The Trump administration expelled 15 Cuban diplomats from the embassy in Washington in an escalating response to mysterious illnesses afflicting American embassy personnel in Havana.
The expulsions were intended to force the Cubans to operate their embassy in Washington under the same emergency conditions that the United States is now operating under in Havana. The Trump administration decided last week to pare its staff in Havana down to a skeletal group of just 27 people who can carry out emergency services.
A State Department official said that the Cuban government would need to give a clear assurance that the attacks would not continue before the personnel in either embassy could return.
The expulsions represent yet another step in the administration’s gradual unwinding of the Obama administration’s rapprochement with Cuba, a reopening welcomed by much of Latin America and Europe — but criticized by many Cuban émigrés from Florida and elsewhere.
In a briefing with reporters Tuesday [10-3-17] morning, State Department officials said that the Cuban ambassador in Washington was informed of the expulsions in a 9 a.m. phone call. The expelled embassy personnel must be out of the United States within seven days. By then, the American embassy in Havana will have completed its own drawdown…
But State Department officials emphasized that they are not accusing the Cuban government of complicity in the attacks.”
-Gardiner Harris, “Trump Administration Expels 15 Cuban Diplomats From Embassy in Washington,” The New York Times online, Oct. 3, 2017 08:12am