UNITED NATIONS, Oct 30 (APP) – For the 16th year in a row, the UN General Assembly on Tuesday adopted by a thumping majority a resolution that calls for the lifting of sanctions imposed by the United States against Cuba 45 years ago.
Delegates in the General Assembly chamber broke into applause when the vote in favour of the resolution flashed on the screen — 184 to four with one abstention. That was a one-vote improvement over last year.
Only four countries—the United States, Israel, Palau and the Marshall islands—voted against while Micronesia abstained.
The margin of support has grown steadily since 1992 when 59 countries had voted in favour. The figure was 179 in 2004 and 182 in 2005.
The vote came less than a week after Bush delivered his first major address on Cuban policy in four years, attacking the Havana government and challenging the international community to help the island shed Fidel Castro’s rule.
“The blockade had never been enforced with such viciousness as over the last year,” Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told the assembly, accusing President Bush’s administration of adopting “new measures bordering on madness and fanaticism” that have hurt Cuba and interfered in its relations with at least 30 countries.
The United States has no diplomatic relations with Cuba, lists the country as a state sponsor of terror and has long sought to isolate it through travel restrictions and a trade embargo. This year, it stepped up enforcement of financial sanctions.
Castro, 81, temporarily ceded power to his brother Raul in July 2006 after undergoing intestinal surgery, and has rarely been seen in public for more than a year.
“It is long past time that the Cuban people enjoy the blessings of economic and political freedom,” U.S. diplomat Ronald Godard said just before Tuesday’s vote.
“We urge member states to oppose and condemn the Cuban government’s internal embargo on freedom, which is the real cause of the suffering of the Cuban people,” he added.
Perez Roque accused the United States of violating international law, depriving Cuban children of medication, and even preventing Cuban writers from participating in a book fair in Puerto Rico.
He expressed Cuba’s solidarity with U.S. movie producer Oliver Stone, who was attacked by the U.S. government for filming in Cuba, and activist director Michael Moore, who is being investigated for visiting Cuba.
“It is McCarthyism of the 21st century,” Perez Roque said.
“Without doubt, as you well know, the brutal economic war that has been imposed on Cuba hasn’t only affected Cubans,” he added, pointing to banks and companies in many countries that have been hurt by the U.S. financial measures.
Perez Roque accused the U.S. of ignoring the 15 previous resolutions “with arrogance and political blindness.”
“Cuba will never surrender,” he said. “It fights and will fight.”
The Assembly reiterated in the resolution its call upon all states to refrain from promulgating and applying laws and measures such as those in the U.S. embargo.
Meanwhile, it urged “states that have and continue to apply such laws and measures to take the necessary steps to repeal or invalidate them as soon as possible in accordance with their legal regime.”