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Cuba signs long-snubbed UN human rights pacts

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque answers questions after a news conference at UN headquarters in New York on Thursday. Representing Cuba, Perez Roque signed two cornerstone UN covenants on human rights that former president Fidel Castro had rejected for decades. PHOTO: AP

Cuba on Thursday signed two cornerstone UN covenants on human rights passed more than 40 years ago in an unprecedented gesture that came just days after Raul Castro took over as president.

For decades, former president Fidel Castro had refused to sign the two covenants adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1966, saying to do so would be to cede to US pressure.

But Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told reporters that foreign pressure played no part in his signing of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The signing "formalizes and reaffirms Cuba's commitment to the rights protected in both instruments, which my country has been systematically implementing since the time of the Cuban revolution in 1959," he said after conferring with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. "The act of signing both covenants responds to a sovereign decision of the Cuban government."

"Cuba has never acted nor will act under pressure," he said.

It was the first international act taken by the new leadership of Raul Castro, who took over on Sunday.

But Perez Roque said that "as far as the scope and application of several of the elements contained in these international instruments, Cuba will register those reservations or interpretative declarations it considers relevant."

Reacting to the signing of the rights treaties, the Cuban opposition demanded political pluralism and an end to harassment.

The most radical dissidents in Cuba denounced what they called "a farce" while their more moderate counterparts voiced hope the move would open the way for freedom of expression.

A total of 236 known political prisoners are held in Cuban jails.

"Now that Cuba has signed an international human rights treaty committing itself to uphold freedom of expression, it should immediately and unconditionally release the 22 independent journalists currently imprisoned for their work," said Carlos Lauria, Americas senior program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York.

Perez Roque also used the occasion to again call for the lifting of the US trade and economic embargo in force against his country since 1962.

The embargo and Washington's hostility against Cuba constitute the most serious obstacle to the enjoyment by the Cuban people of the rights protected by the covenants, he said.

Meanwhile, US President George W. Bush on Thursday slammed Raul Castro as a "tyrant" lacking legitimacy and unworthy of bilateral leadership-level talks.

"He's nothing more than the extension of what his brother did, which was to ruin an island and imprison people because of their beliefs," Bush told a White House press conference on Thursday.

Raul Castro was elected to the presidency in a vote by the national assembly.
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