Blinken to be in Beijing for talks on June 18: US official

WASHINGTON – United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to China next week for long-delayed talks aimed at stabilising tense relations, and a US official said he is expected to be there on June 18.

Reuters

reported on Wednesday that Mr Blinken would travel to China

in the coming weeks, citing an official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

An official on Friday said Mr Blinken would be in Beijing on June 18, but gave no other details.

In February, Washington’s top diplomat scrapped a planned trip to Beijing, which would have been the first by an American secretary of state in five years, over a

suspected Chinese spy balloon

that flew over the US.

Washington has been keen to reschedule the trip, and the timing emerged after The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Thursday that

China has reached a secret deal with Cuba

to establish an electronic eavesdropping facility on the island roughly 160km from Florida.

A spokesman for the White House National Security Council on Thursday said the report was not accurate, while adding that Washington has had “real concerns” about China’s relationship with Cuba and was closely monitoring it.

The State Department, White House and Pentagon did not, however, immediately respond to requests for comment on a subsequent The New York Times report that said China was planning to build a facility in Cuba that US officials were concerned could be capable of spying on the US by intercepting signals from nearby American military and commercial facilities.

In Havana on Thursday, Cuban Vice-Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio dismissed the WSJ report as “totally mendacious and unfounded”, calling it a US fabrication meant to justify Washington’s decades-old economic embargo against the island nation.

He said Cuba rejects all foreign military presence in Latin America and the Caribbean.

China’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday that “spreading rumours and slander” was a common tactic of “hacker empire” the US.

The Cuba issue could raise questions about Mr Blinken’s planned trip, intended by Washington to be a major step towards what President Joe Biden has

called a “thaw” in relations

between the world’s two largest economies.

Ties have deteriorated over disputes ranging from Beijing’s human rights record, military activity in the South China Sea and near Taiwan, and technology competition.

US Senator Mark Warner, chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, and Senator Marco Rubio, the panel’s vice-chair, said on Thursday they were “deeply disturbed” by the WSJ report and urged the Biden administration “to take steps to prevent this serious threat to our national security and sovereignty”.

A spokesman for China’s Washington Embassy said it had no information about Mr Blinken’s trip, but referred to

Mr Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s last meeting

in November 2022, and added: “China is open to having dialogue with the United States. We hope the US will work in the same direction with China, and jointly implement the important common understandings between the two Presidents in their Bali meeting.” REUTERS