UN votes to end US blockade against Cuba, again 179 to 4
October 28, 2004
United Nations, Oct 28, 2004 (Prensa Latina) The UN General
Assembly approved Thursday a resolution that demands the end of the US blockade
against Cuba by 179 votes in favor, four against and one abstention. Before the
crushing victory, Cuban Foreign Affairs Minister Felipe Perez Roque said that
countries from all continents had conveyed their full and unconditional support
to Havana.
In his speech before the UN forum, Perez Roque asserted that Washington was
afraid of lifting the embargo because it was scared of the example the Caribbean
island represented for the world.
He dismantled the White House arguments to avoid the assembly's approval of the
document to lift the economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba.
It is more than an embargo; it is a genocidal economic war at the international
level, the high ranking official contended.
"Cuba is not allowed to export to the US; US tourists are not allowed to travel
to Cuba; We are deprived of gaining access to technologies made in that country;
Cuba is not allowed to import products, equipment or raw material from the US,"
Perez Roque explained.
He mentioned the case of a Canadian subsidiary firm that could not sell X-rays
devices, and that of a French company that could not complete the sale of cash
dispensers because it was bought by a North American enterprise. He also
recalled that the import of a quadruple vaccine from a Dutch entity was
suspended as Washington told the company that it could not sell it because it
contained 10 percent of a US antigen.
"Why does the Torricelli Act prohibit world ships from entering Cuban ports
under the threat of putting them in a "black list" and denying their access to
US ports during six months?," he added.
The Cuban Foreign minister referred to the Helms-Burton Act, effective since
1996, to punish entrepreneurs who want to negotiate with Havana. "Is it true or
not, Mr. US representative, that your government put a 100 million USD fine on
the Swiss UBS bank for receiving dollar transfers from Cuba?," he asked again.
"If the US administration fully believes the Island is using the blockade issue
as a pretext, why doesn´t it lift the blockade and leave us without a pretext?,"
he noted. Cuba is right, and time is on its side. The condemnation of the
blockade, whose damage has amounted to nearly 80 billion dollars, is multiplying
worldwide, the minister concluded.
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