Caracas, October 23 (RHC)-- On the same day that the U.S. administration put into effect new measures that further tightened the economic blockade against the island, Cuba ratified its decision to continue collaborating with Venezuela, "because the solidarity of our peoples is above the provocations of the empire.”

Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment of the Republic of Cuba, Roberto Lopez Hernandez, reiterated this view in Caracas, at a meeting running until Thursday to analyze the progress of the bilateral Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement.

The meeting also will set the goals for 2020, whose projections of social benefit face obstacles generated by the interference and obstinacy of the Trump Administration and its regional lackeys.

Lopez Hernandez said that the encounter demonstrates the will and the response to the empire's cynical threats and sanctions, "which accuses Cuba of supporting the Bolivarian Revolution, but they will have to wipe us off the map if they want us to stop collaborating with this sister nation and its constitutional government."

Ramón Gordils, the Deputy Minister of Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of People's Power for Foreign Affairs of Venezuela, remarked that with a great spirit of resistance, Venezuela and Cuba continue their agenda of integration, cooperation, and development, in spite of the great economic difficultiesin both countries.

Gordils called these efforts "an exercise of stubbornness" and strategic patience and an example for the peoples of Our America," and referred to the international situation, marked by "the imposition of sanctions and illegal, coercive, unilateral measures, in breach of international law, implemented against Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.