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Cuba condemns 45-year-old US embargo

Washington's 45-year-old embargo has cost Cuba more than US$89 billion to date, wreaking havoc on everything from education to pest control and nearly all other facets of island life, the foreign minister said on Tuesday.

Havana produced a 56-page booklet laying out its latest argument against the embargo ahead of next month's meeting in New York of the UN General Assembly, which has voted 15 years in a row to urge the US to lift trade sanctions against Cuba.

Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said the US policy caused US$3 billion in losses over the past year alone to the economy of Cuba -- which had a GDP last year estimated at US$40 billion, according to the CIA World Factbook.

The embargo "has reached levels of schizophrenia and made the last year notable for the ferocious and cruel way the blockade has been applied," Perez Roque told a news conference. Washington, he said, is bent on "persecuting Cuban interests and attempting to beat our people into submission with hunger and disease."

Cuban officials came up with the US$89 billion price tag by adding estimated extra costs spent over the decades to buy from third countries many goods that would have been cheaper in the US. The figure also includes lost income, including additional tourism from the US.

The full trade embargo took effect Feb. 7, 1962, under president John F. Kennedy, blocking all trade with Cuba except for non-subsidized sale of food and medicine. Its aim was -- and still is -- to financially strangle Fidel Castro's government and force a change in the communist-run island's system.

US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez on Monday called the embargo a success and said the sanctions are designed to punish Havana, not hurt the island's people.

But many members of US Congress and other US officials say the embargo has failed and have called for partial or full elimination of the sanctions.

US presidential hopeful Christopher Dodd vows to scrap the embargo if elected, while fellow Democrat Barack Obama would reduce restrictions on Americans wanting to visit family members in Cuba.

Perez Roque said most US proposals do not go far enough, and "the blockade should be lifted immediately and unconditionally."

Havana's report said US patents and other provisions of the embargo prevent it from purchasing current medical technologies, pesticides and even materials for blind children because Braille products are produced primarily in the US.

Internet access is also severely limited and expensive, because Cuba must rely on satellites instead of tapping into one of eight major fiber-optic cables that run underwater near the island but are linked to US interests.

Even Cuba's dilapidated public transportation system feels the pinch. Transportation official Gladys Fernandez, who presented testimony along with other officials during the hours-long ceremony Tuesday, said Havana's decades-old bus system would be able to handle 20 million more passengers a year if it were allowed to import US-made vehicles and parts.

Perez Roque said 85,000 Americans of Cuban origin visited Cuba in 2003 but that number dropped to 37,000 last year -- after the US government tightened travel restrictions in 2004.
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