UNITED NATIONS (AP):
FOR THE 11th straight year, the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution urging the United States to end its four-decade-old trade embargo against Cuba.
The resolution, which is not legally binding, was approved by a vote of 173-3 with four abstentions a larger majority than last year when 167 nations voted "yes." Only the United States, Israel and the Marshall Islands voted in favour of keeping the embargo, as they did last year.
In a speech to the General Assembly before the vote, Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly, accused President George W. Bush of insisting on maintaining the embargo despite "solid backing" in both houses of Congress to modify it and strong support from U.S. farmers and other businessmen to lift it.
Alarcon accused the powerful "anti-Cuban minority, protected by its privileged relations with the current administration," of acting against "the true interests" of the United States by insisting that the embargo continues.
Cuba has been under a U.S. trade embargo since Fidel Castro defeated the CIA-backed assault at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Americans are barred from travelling to the Caribbean island nation except with a government waiver.
Creating a small opening in the trade embargo, the U.S. Congress in 2000 year legalised sales of food to the communist island for the first time since 1961.
Thanks to pressure from American farmers and agricultural companies, Alarcon said a number of U.S. exporters were allowed to sell products to Cuba this year for the first time in over four decades "despite the severe obstacles and discriminatory practices they had to confront."
"In 11 months, we received over 50 merchant ships that transported 712,000 tons of U.S. agricultural products, Alarcon said. "The total cost of these purchases, including their transportation, was US$140 million, and that figure could reach US$200 million with the new purchases recently negotiated."
But Ambassador Sichan Siv, the U.S. representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, told the General Assembly that Bush has made clear he would only work to ease the embargo "if the Cuban government takes concrete steps toward democracy and market reforms."
"Unfortunately, the Cuban government shows no signs of abandoning its policies that deny the Cuban people their fundamental rights," Siv said.
The United States was "particularly disappointed " by the Cuban government's decision to ignore the Varela Project, which collected more than 11,000 signatures for a referendum that would ask voters if they favour rights such as greater freedom of speech and private business ownership.
In appealing for a "no" vote on the embargo resolution, Siv denied that the embargo was the cause of Cuba's economic problems, saying Cuba imports some US$ 1 billion worth of goods every year from many different countries, including European Union members.
"The focus of the international community ... should be on the continuing human rights crisis in Cuba rather than on the bilateral United States efforts to encourage a peaceful transition to democracy," he said.
