By IANS
Havana : Cuba has demanded an end to the economic embargo imposed 45 years ago by the US saying the policy has cost the island nation $89 billion, Spanish news agency EFE reported Wednesday.
Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque Tuesday presented the report here that Cuba will take to the UN General Assembly next month.
The document, which will be voted on in New York on Oct 30, estimates the communist-ruled island’s losses from the embargo over the past year at more than $3 billion.
“We’re at the point where the embargo is being applied with more viciousness, with more ferocity,” said Perez Roque, who demanded that it be lifted and reacted sharply to recent comments by US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez.
In a speech Monday to a right-wing think tank in Washington, Havana-born Gutierrez said the embargo had been successful, rejected any US dialogue with Havana and said that Cuba is a “parody” with regard to human rights.
“Our country has been clear in its position, and (although) it is ready for a respectful dialogue of our sovereignty and rights, as equals, it is ready to continue resisting the blockade and the attacks for 1,000 years, and if it has not been driven to its knees to date, even less so will it be in the future,” the foreign minister said.
Perez Roque said that Gonzalez’s remarks about the fundamental rights guarantees in Cuba lacked support.
“Cuba has not been accused of torture, secret flights, kidnapping of people,” said the Cuban minister, who denounced the current situation in the prison at the US Navy base on Cuban soil at Guantanamo.
“Who is the parody, who is the violator,” asked Perez Roque, whose government is said by Cuban human rights organisations to be holding around 240 political prisoners.
Regarding the embargo, the US “acknowledges the truth: that they are making our people suffer, that they are trying to make us surrender because of hunger and sickness, that they are not leaving a single space within the Cubans’ economic and social life where they are not attacking,” he added.
“The US government does not have a single reason to justify the policy of the blockade, a policy of genocide against a people who do not constitute a threat to the security of the US,” Perez Roque said.
Cuba hopes to gain majority support for its condemnation of the embargo in the General Assembly. Last year’s resolution was approved by a vote of 183-4 with one abstention.