U.N. Urges U.S. To End Cuba Embargo

Taken from Yahoo News, 08.11.06
By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to urge the United States to end its 45-year-old trade embargo against Cuba after defeating an amendment calling on Fidel Castro's government to free political prisoners and respect human rights.

It was the 15th straight year that the 192-member world body approved a resolution calling for the U.S. economic and commercial embargo against Cuba to be repealed "as soon as possible."

Cuba's Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told the assembly "the economic war unleashed by the U.S. against Cuba, the longest and most ruthless ever known, qualifies as an act of genocide and constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and the charter of the United Nations."

Perez Roque said the embargo has caused $86 billion in economic damage to Cuba since it began.

U.S. deputy ambassador Ronald Godard later said that to claim the embargo adversely affects the Cuban people ignores "the truth" that the Cuban government has systematically denied "the human, economic, labor and political rights of its people over 47 years."

"We maintain this embargo to demonstrate our continuing call for economic and political freedom for all Cubans," Godard said.

The embargo, aimed at toppling Castro's socialist system, was imposed after the failed CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. It has been steadily tightened under President Bush'.

Delegates in the General Assembly chamber burst into applause when the vote flashed on the screen — 183 in favor to 4 opposed, with 1 abstention.

Joining the United States in voting "no" were Israel and the South Pacific nations of the Marshall Islands and Palau. Micronesia, also in the South Pacific, abstained.

In Cuba, state-run television showed Foreign Ministry officials cheering when the vote was announced.

"This confirms once again by the U.N. itself that the embargo is totally illegal and wrong and needs to be suspended," said Hipolito Rodriguez, a customs worker in Havana.

The General Assembly voted on the resolution soon after defeating an amendment by Australia stating that the U.S. laws and measures "were motivated by valid concerns about the continued lack of democracy and political freedom in Cuba."

It also would have called on Cuba to release all political prisoners, cooperate with international human rights bodies, respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and comply with all human rights treaties to which it is a signatory.

Australia's U.N. Ambassador Robert Hill said his country proposed the amendment in hopes that if Cuba met its obligations, "we would not need to return to this issue every year," he said.

Perez Roque called Australia the "lackeys" of the United States for introducing the amendment, which he claimed was drafted in Washington.