US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken plans to travel to Beijing next Sunday, June 18, to hold long-delayed talks to stabilize the US-China relationship, a US official said yesterday.

The source did not provide further details.

In February, the US secretary of state canceled a planned trip to the Chinese capital, his first in five years, over the issue of a high-flying Chinese balloon in US airspace, which Washington called a spy and sent a fighter jet to knock it down.

Since then, Washington has been trying to reschedule the visit, but things seem to have been complicated by reports in the US press, particularly the Wall Street Journal, about China’s “secret agreement” with Cuba to set up a communications interception base on the Caribbean island. 160 kilometers from the coast of Florida, where important US military installations are located.

Representatives of the National Security Council of the White House and the US Department of Defense said last Thursday that the WSJ article was “not accurate”, however the former, John Kirby, hastened to add that Washington has “real concerns” about the Beijing relationship -Havana and follows her “closely”.

The New York Times newspaper also published a report on the alleged agreement.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry reacted yesterday Friday by referring to “rumors and slander” from the “wiretapping empire”, the US. Cuban diplomacy described the article as “false and non-existent”.

However, the reports about Cuba may once again call into question Mr. Blinken’s trip, theoretically a major step towards the “rewarming” of relations recently predicted by US President Joe Biden.

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner and his Republican colleague Marco Rubio, the heads of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said they were “deeply troubled” by the information published by the Wall Street Journal, demanding that “the US to respond to China’s continued brazen attacks against our national security.”

A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington limited himself to saying he had no information about Mr. Blinken’s possible trip, referring to the most recent meeting between the two countries’ presidents, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, in November, and adding: “China is open to dialogue with the USA. We hope that the US will work in the same direction as China and that what was agreed between the two presidents in their talks in Bali will be jointly implemented.”