UN assembly repeats call for an end to US embargo against Cuba

For the 14th year in a row, the UN General Assembly on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling for an end to the 41-year-old commercial, economic and financial embargo by the United States against Cuba.

The resolution passed with a vote of 182 in favor to four against with one abstention. The four opponents were Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau and the United States. Last year's resolution garnered 179 in favor with the same countries voting no.

Introducing the resolution, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said that over the decades-long blockade, the measures had not been enforced with such brutality as in the last 18 months. As a result, for the first time an American would be barred from smoking a Cuban cigar even when traveling to another country.

"Such insanity should go into the Guinness Book of World Records," he said.

Travel to Cuba from the United States and elsewhere had dropped markedly since the imposition of the heightened sanctions. The blockade had cost Cubans nearly 82 billion US dollars, and had as well deprived the United States of low-cost goods, cholesterol- reducing drugs, drugs for HIV/AIDS and much more.

The foreign minister claimed the strengthened embargo was an economic war against Cuba, carried out on a global scale.

But US Ambassador John Bolton's advisor, Ronald Godard, argued that his country's trade embargo against Cuba was merely bilateral, or a matter between the two countries, which should not come before the assembly. However, since Cuba had raised the issue, he responded that Cuban President Fidel Castro was using it to try to blame the United States for the failures of his economic policies.

In its resolution the assembly reiterated that, since its first resolution on the matter in 1992, the United States had taken further measures to strengthen and extend the restrictions, adversely affecting the Cuban people at home and abroad.

It also expressed concern about the implementation of laws and regulations, such as the US's Helms-Burton Act of March 1996, "the extraterritorial effects of which affect the sovereignty of other states, the legitimate interest of entities or persons under their jurisdiction and the freedom of trade and navigation."

Source: Xinhua