Washington and Havana are trading barbs over U.S. treatment of a Cuban intelligence agent who left prison in 2011 but has been ordered to remain in America while he completes three years of parole.
Cuba complains it has not been afforded consular access to Rene Gonzalez since September.
The U.S. State Department responds that the 1963 Vienna Convention does not apply because Gonzalez is a dual U.S.-Cuban citizen.
It says he has been allowed to travel in recent months from the undisclosed location where he’s living to meet with Cuban consular officials in Washington.
Havana retorted late Thursday, saying it routinely allows U.S. envoys to visit Cuban-American prisoners on the island. Gonzalez is one of the so-called Cuban Five, who were sentenced in 2001 to long prison terms in U.S.