Cu­ba's Am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go has re­ject­ed re­cent ac­cu­sa­tions against for­mer Cuban pres­i­dent Raúl Cas­tro, de­scrib­ing them as base­less and part of ef­forts by the Unit­ed States to jus­ti­fy in­creased hos­til­i­ty to­wards the Caribbean na­tion.

Speak­ing at a cer­e­mo­ny mark­ing the birth­days of Cuban na­tion­al hero An­to­nio Maceo and rev­o­lu­tion­ary leader Ernesto "Che" Gue­vara on Sat­ur­day, the am­bas­sador said both men re­mained sym­bols of Cu­ba's fight for sov­er­eign­ty and in­de­pen­dence.

The am­bas­sador not­ed that Gue­vara fought along­side Raúl Cas­tro dur­ing the Cuban Rev­o­lu­tion and de­fend­ed Cu­ba's ac­tions in pro­tect­ing its ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty, cit­ing re­peat­ed vi­o­la­tions of Cuban air­space in the 1990s.

The com­ments came weeks af­ter US pros­e­cu­tors filed charges against Cas­tro re­lat­ed to the 1996 down­ing of two ex­ile group Broth­ers to the Res­cue air­craft, an in­ci­dent Cu­ba main­tains was an act of self-de­fence af­ter re­peat­ed vi­o­la­tions of its air­space.

He al­so crit­i­cised long­stand­ing US sanc­tions against Cu­ba, say­ing the mea­sures have se­vere­ly af­fect­ed the coun­try's econ­o­my, bank­ing sys­tem and health­care sec­tor.

Ac­cord­ing to the am­bas­sador, more than 100,000 pa­tients are cur­rent­ly await­ing sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures in Cu­ba due to short­ages linked to the sanc­tions regime.

The diplo­mat fur­ther con­demned the re­cent de­ci­sion by the Unit­ed States to place Cu­ba's state oil com­pa­ny, CU­PET, on a sanc­tions list, warn­ing that the move could de­ter for­eign com­pa­nies from con­duct­ing busi­ness with the en­ter­prise.

Thank­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions and sup­port­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go for their sol­i­dar­i­ty, the am­bas­sador said Cu­ba would con­tin­ue de­fend­ing its sov­er­eign­ty and right to de­ter­mine its own fu­ture.

Last month, lo­cal groups in­clud­ing the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee and the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice do­nat­ed med­ical sup­plies to Cu­ba and pub­licly op­posed threats of mil­i­tary ac­tion against the is­land.