The UN General Assembly on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly for the 17th year in a row in favor of lifting the 46-year-old US trade embargo on Cuba, as Havana hoped for better ties with a new US administration.
Some 185 of the assembly’s 192 members approved a resolution, which reiterated a “call upon all states to refrain from promulgating and applying laws and measures [such as those in the US embargo] in conformity with their obligations under the Charter of the United Nations and international law.”
The US, Israel and Palau voted against the resolution, while Micronesia and the Marshall Islands abstained.
The margin of support for ending the embargo has grown steadily since 1992, when 59 countries voted in favor of the resolution. The figure was 179 in 2004, 182 in 2005 and 184 last year.
Ronald Godard, the US State Department’s senior adviser for Latin American affairs, defended the embargo and blamed the communist regime in Havana for Cuba’s woes.
“The real reason the Cuban economy is in terrible condition and that so many Cubans remain mired in poverty is that Cuba’s regime continues to deny its people their basic human and economic rights,” he told the General Assembly.
Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque welcomed the vote but also looked ahead to future US-Cuban relations after next week’s White House election between Democratic Senator Barack Obama and Republican Senator John McCain.
The US economic, trade and financial sanctions were imposed 46 years ago following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of the Caribbean island nation by US-backed Cuban exiles.
Noting that the US embargo is “older than Barack Obama and my entire generation,” Perez Roque said the new US president “will have to decide whether to concede that the embargo is a failed policy which each time creates greater isolation and discredits his country or whether he continues, with obstinacy and cruelty, to try to wear out the Cuban people with hunger and diseases.”
McCain has promised that if elected he would press Cuba’s communist rulers to free the island’s people.
“If I’m elected president, I won’t meet unconditionally with the Castro brothers, while they keep political prisoners in jail, stifle free media and block free elections in Cuba,” he recently told a rally in Miami, home to a huge Cuban exiled community.
The comment was a swipe at Obama, who has said he would meet with the leaders of countries that are enemies of the US.
A national survey by the Zogby polling organization, released on Oct. 2, found that 60 percent of Americans believed the White House should change its policy toward Cuba.
In an apparent reference to Obama’s campaign theme of “Change,” Perez Roque said that “to be coherent with the theme of change in this country [the United States] also means to change the embargo against Cuba and maintain normal and respectful relations with our country.”
In Cuba itself, authorities were jubilant after the UN vote.
It reaffirmed “the world rejection of the genocidal and criminal policy of this siege and the failure of the George W. Bush administration in its aggression against Cuba,” Fernando Remirez de Estenoz, head of the Cuban Communist Party’s external relations department, told the Cuban news agency.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS