U.N. General Assembly Condemns U.S. for Cuba Embargo, Again
UNITED NATIONS — Ignoring what America considers Cuba's "embargo on freedom," the General Assembly yesterday affirmed for the 16th consecutive year its opposition to economic measures Washington has had in force since the 1960s to isolate the Castro regime.
The debate, a throwback to the bipolar days of the Cold War, was far from even. The 192-member body was all but unified in support of "freedom of trade and navigation," and of condemnation of America's embargo on Cuba. The only opposition besides America came from Israel, Palau, and the Marshall Islands, while Micronesia abstained.
By its "blockade," America "attempts to subdue the Cuban people through starvation and disease," Foreign Minister Felipe Perez-Roque of Cuba said. The embargo "had never been enforced with such viciousness as over the last year," he said, and it is "bordering on madness and fanaticism." According to "conservative estimates," Mr. Perez-Roque added, America's "brutal economic war" has caused Cuba losses that add up to "no less than $222 billion." Citing Havana's own statistics, however, an American U.N. ambassador, Ronald Godard, said America has exported nearly $2 billion in agricultural, medical, and humanitarian goods to Cuba since 2002, while private American groups were authorized by Washington to provide $270 million worth of food and medicines to the communist island last year. "Cuba's problems derive not from any decision of the United States but from the embargo on freedom that the Cuban regime has imposed on its own people," Mr. Godard said. "We are one of Cuba's largest suppliers of food and one of Cuba's largest trading partners." Even America's natural U.N. allies, such as the European Union, however, joined the supporters of the resolution. The "achievements in health care and education" by the Castro regime are "undermined by its restrictions on civil, political, and economic rights," Portugal's ambassador, Joao Salgueiro, said, speaking for the European Union. Nevertheless, he added, "We express our rejection of all unilateral measures against Cuba."
Israel and small Pacific island countries, such as Palau, were left in a tiny minority. "We believe this is a bilateral matter," Palau's U.N. ambassador, Stuart Beck, said. Mr Beck is often a part of the isolated group dubbed by some as the "powerful Palau PAC," formerly known as the "mighty Micronesia bloc." This group of small countries and America was just as lonely when it voted last year against the formation of the Human Rights Council, he noted, adding, "Being in the majority is not always being right."
Since its inception, the Geneva-based council has concentrated almost exclusively on perceived Israeli violations while ignoring human rights situations in countries such as Cuba, one of its members. Yesterday's vote siding with the Cuban regime "only serves to further undermine the moral standing of the General Assembly whose silence on the regime's human rights abuses makes a mockery of the resolution," Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican of Florida, said. The assembly "cast its lot with one of the most oppressive regimes in the world," she added, vowing that sanctions will remain intact until Cuba "submits to free and fair elections and the people of Cuba are free to embrace democratic values."
