| Online: | |
| Visits: | |
| Stories: |
| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
UN Again Urges End to U.S. Cuban Embargo
The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to demand that the United States end its 52-year-old economic embargo against Cuba.
The assembly has adopted a similar resolution every year going back to 1992.
Tuesday’s vote was 188-2 with three abstentions.
Israel joined the United States in voting “no,” while Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands abstained.
The embargo has cost Cuba more than $1 trillion and imposed tremendous hardships on the population, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said in presenting the resolution.
“The suffering of our families cannot be quantified,” he said, after noting that 77 percent of Cuba’s people have never known life without the embargo.
Citing growing support in the United States for ending the embargo, Rodriguez said Cuba is inviting Washington to embark on a “mutually respectful relationship” based on equality, international law and the principles of the U.N. Charter.
Some of those who spoke in favor of the resolution, which included the representatives of U.S. allies Mexico and Colombia, hailed Cuba’s dispatch of hundreds of health professionals to West Africa to help combat the Ebola epidemic.
But U.S. diplomat Ronald Godard said that while Cuba’s efforts against Ebola are “laudable,” they do not excuse the Cuban government’s treatment of its own people.
The embargo is aimed at helping Cuba’s people exercise their basic human rights and the resolution condemning the U.S. policy “serves only to distract from the real problems facing Cubans,” Godard said.
Published in Latino Daily News
Source: http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/latino-daily-news/details/un-again-urges-end-to-u.s.-cuban-embargo/31390#When:20:04:42Z
