The withdrawal followed calls from the government and senior militia leaders. It ended a two-day crisis marked by the breach of the largest and one of the most heavily fortified U.S. diplomatic missions in the world.
The talks at the State Department came as national security agencies and members of Congress express frustration about the lack of answers about what the U.S says were deliberate attacks on some two dozen staffers at the U.S. Embassy in the Cuban capital.
The new “medically confirmed” worker is one of two who were recently evacuated from Cuba after reporting symptoms and brought to the University of Pennsylvania for testing.
A U.S. government employee in southern China reported abnormal sensations of sound and pressure, the State Department said Wednesday, recalling similar experiences among American diplomats in Cuba who later fell ill.
The State Department said it was setting a new, permanent staffing plan that maintains the lower level of roughly two-dozen people — “the minimum personnel necessary to perform core diplomatic and consular functions.”
All together, the symptoms are similar to the brain dysfunction seen with concussions, concluded a team of specialists who tested 21 of the 24 Havana embassy personnel thought to be affected by "health attacks" in late 2016.
The plan to accelerate the move of the embassy marked the highlight of Pence’s three-day visit to Israel celebrating President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he’s not convinced that what he calls the “deliberate attacks” are over. He defended his September decision to order most U.S. personnel and their relatives to leave Cuba and said he won’t reverse course until Cuba’s government assures they’ll be safe.
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