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CUBA TRAVEL U.S. |
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For 14th year, UN General
Assembly urges U.S. to end embargo against Cuba
Canada East, Canada - November 8
BY Edith M. Lederer / AP
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The UN General Assembly
overwhelmingly urged the United States Tuesday to end its 44-year-old trade
embargo against Cuba, a call U.S. Ambassador John Bolton dismissed as an
"exercise in irrelevancy."
It was the 14th straight year that the 191-member world
body approved a resolution calling for the U.S. economic and commercial
embargo against Cuba to be repealed "as soon as possible."
The vote was 182-4, with on abstention, a higher "yes"
vote than last year's vote of 179-4 with one abstention. Many delegates in the
General Assembly hall burst into applause when the result was flashed on an
electronic screen.
The United States, Israel, Palau and the Marshall
Islands voted against the resolution, while Micronesia abstained. Four
countries did not indicate any position at all: El Salvador, Iraq, Morocco and
Nicaragua.
The resolution is not legally binding and Cuba's Foreign
Minister Felipe Perez Roque noted that the U.S. government has ignored it for
the last 13 years. But he said that didn't diminish "the legal, political,
moral and ethical importance of this vote."
In Cuba, hundreds of government supporters in Havana's
convention centre shouted in glee and jumped up and down when the result was
announced.
State-run television showed several high-ranking
officials among those who had gathered to await the news, though Cuban
President Fidel Castro did not appear to be at the centre.
In the streets of the capital, other Cubans expressed
satisfaction with the outcome.
"It's time for them to stop this shamelessness," said
Fidencio Alonso, referring to those keeping the embargo alive. "What they are
doing tramples us."
Bolton, who chose to attend a Security Council meeting
to vote on an Iraq resolution rather than the General Assembly vote on Cuba,
told reporters "this is a complete exercise in irrelevancy."
The fact that "this exercise in Cuban propaganda" was
adopted by a General Assembly that has not yet seriously attempted to reform
the UN Human Rights Commission or engage in the management reforms supported
by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "tells you something," he said.
Cuba launched a broad public relations campaign drawing
attention to its complaints against the embargo, and speaker after speaker in
the General Assembly debate opposed the U.S. sanctions imposed after Fidel
Castro defeated the CIA-backed assault at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.
The embargo, aimed at toppling Castro's socialist
system, has been steadily tightened under U.S. President George W. Bush's two
terms. Perez Roque said "most likely" Bush will tighten the blockade even
further.
"Never before, as in the last 18 months, was the
blockade enforced with so much viciousness and brutality. Never before had we
seen so cruel and relentless a persecution by a U.S. administration against
the economy and the right of the Cubans to a dignified and decent life," the
Cuban minister said.
"The blockade is an economic war enforced with
incomparable zeal at a global scale," he said. "Now Cuba has two obstacles to
overcome: the helpless imperial haughtiness of President Bush, which has taken
him farther than anyone else in this madness, and the ever-increasing
globalization of the world economy."
But Perez Roque stressed that "the U.S. government is
delusional with the idea that it can overthrow the Cuban revolution."
Jamaica's UN Ambassador Stafford Neil, speaking on
behalf of the Group of 77, which includes 132 mainly developing countries and
China, said its members oppose "unilateral coercive measures against
developing countries."
The Group of 77 recognizes "that the embargo has caused
huge material losses and economic damage to the people of Cuba" and has
repeatedly demanded that the United States lift it, he said.
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