UN votes to end Cuba embargo
UNITED NATIONS : Nov 9 (South News) - The United Nations has voted
overwhelmingly, for the eighth year in a row, for an end to America's
40-year-old economic embargo against Cuba.
Similar resolutions have been adopted by increasing majorities each year
since 1992.The vote was 155 to two, with eight abstentions - a record
majority and even larger than last year's 152 to two, with 12 abstentions.
Like last year, only Israel voted with the US. The 15 members of the
European Union along with such allies as Japan, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand all voted for the resolution.
Cuba to sue U.S. for $100 billion
Opening the debate ahead of the vote, the president of Cuba's National
Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon, said Cuba planned to sue the US for more than
$100bn in compensation for the "enormous damages" caused by the embargo.
"I am officially announcing to this assembly," Alarcon said in a speech
Tuesday, "that a lawsuit will be filed against the government of the United
States for compensation of over $100 billion on account of the enormous
damages caused to the people of Cuba by the blockade."
A Havana court last week upheld a $181.1 billion compensation claim by Cuba
against the U.S. government for deaths and injuries it said were caused by
four decades of hostilities, including the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.
The Assembly resolution is titled ``Necessity of ending the economic,
commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America
against Cuba.''
It refers particularly to the 1996 ``Helms-Burton Act'' that allows U.S.
citizens who were Cuban citizens before President Fidel Castro's 1959
communist revolution to file suit in U.S. courts against foreign companies
or individuals who ``traffic'' in confiscated property. The law allows U.S.
visas to be denied to shareholders and officers of foreign companies
operating those properties in Cuba.
The U.N. resolution again expresses concern about ``the continued
promulgation and application by member states of laws and regulations, such
as that ... known as the 'Helms-Burton Act.'''
It says their extra-territorial effects ``affect the sovereignty of other
states, the legitimate interests of entities or persons under their
jurisdiction and the freedom of trade and navigation.''
As in previous years, the resolution calls on all states to refrain from
promulgating and applying such laws. It urges those that continue to apply
them to ``take the necessary steps to repeal or invalidate them as soon as
possible.''
Rejection of the U.S. embargo is expected to be included in a declaration
to be issued by 21 leaders from Latin America, Spain and Portugal at an
Ibero-American summit in Havana next week, according to a text now being
prepared.
A recent U.N. report on the implementation of last year's resolution
calling for repeal of the U.S. embargo included a note from Cuba saying the
international community ``cannot remain impassive before such shameless
conduct, which violates the most elementary principle of relations between
sovereign states.''
``No matter how powerful a country is, it cannot, on the eve of a new
millennium, act with impunity to stifle a small country, deny an entire
nation access to its most basis means of subsistence and attempt to induce
others to become accessories to such a crime, turning back the clock to the
age of barbarism,'' Cuba added.
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