[News] UN Unanimously Rejects Blockade as US Abstains for First Time

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/UN-Unanimously-Rejects-Blockade-as-US-Abstains-for-First-Time-20161026-0003.html 



  UN Unanimously Rejects Blockade as US Abstains for First Time

26 October 2016

In a historic step toward lifting the blockade on Cuba, the United 
States abstained Wednesday in the United Nations general assembly vote 
unamimously calling for the end of the Cold War measure for the 25th 
consecutive year.

"The United States has always voted against this resolution," said U.S. 
representative to the U.N. Samantha Power. "Today, the United States 
will abstain."

Only two countries, the United States and Israel, abstained from the 
vote, while 191 of the 193 member states in the assembly voted in favor 
of the resolution. Last year, 191 states voted in favor of the 
resolution. Only the United States and Israel voted against it.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez presented the draft resolution to 
the assembly, heralding the U.S. announcement of a historic abstention 
as a “positive step” in the ongoing process of normalizing relations 
between the two countries after decades of resistance by Cuban people.

“There is no doubt that progress has been made … However the economic, 
commercial and financial blockade persists,” Rodriguez said. “It causes 
harm to the Cuban people and impairs the country’s economic development.”

Rodriguez highlighted the fact that U.S. President Barack Obama and 
other leaders have acknowledged the “obsolete” nature of the blockade 
and the fact that it is a “failed nonsensical and unviable policy and a 
burden to all citizens that harms the Cuban people and plunges the 
United States into isolation and should be lifted.” He also argued that 
ending the blockade would give "meaning, depth and soundness" to the 
progress toward renewed relations that has been made so far since the 
end of 2014.

Speaking to the general assembly, the representative of the Caribbean 
community Caricom, Jamaica’s Courtenay Rattray, stressed that “virtually 
the entire international community has consistently highlighted that 
this … measure is inconsistent with international law” and called for a 
move to “bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas.”

The representative of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean 
States, known as Celac, the Dominican Republic’s Francis Lorenzo, echoed 
condemnation of the blockade for going against the U.N. charter and 
international law, calling the measure “unjust” and a “major obstacle to 
the normal development of Cuba.”

But although the U.N. has been telling the White House to nix the 
blockade for a quarter of a century and is highly politically symbolic, 
the resolution is non-binding, meaning it hold little weight to force 
concrete action. Only U.S. Congress, where friendlier relations with 
Cuba have been rebuffed by Republicans, has the power to lift the 
blockade on Cuba.

Washington’s overtures to restore normal diplomatic relations with the 
island nation proceeds in fits-and-starts. U.S. President Barack Obama 
has assured his Cuban counterpart Raul Cast that the blockade will be 
lifted, but he has not specified an expected timeline of when that might 
happen despite maintaining that it is logical step in the normalization 
of ties. Last month, Obama renewed the U.S. Trading with the Enemy Act, 
extending the blockade against Cuba for another year. Obama has admitted 
that the blockade is “hurting the Cuban people.”

Cuba claims that the blockade has cost the island nation US$4.7 billion 
in past year in lost potential export revenue and trade and financial 
transactions and a whopping US$753.7 billion over the past half century.

Cuban officials have repeatedly insisted that ending the blockade is an 
essential precursor to the full reestablishment of U.S.-Cuba relations, 
which reached a breakthrough with a historic rapprochement in 2014, 
criticizing the policy as an outdated relic of Cold War-era politics.

Despite the landmark reopening of foreign embassies in Havana and 
Washington, commercial flights between the two countries, and other 
changes, talks are ongoing and diplomatic challenges remain. And the 
blockage is at the center of the debate.

Cuba has also called on the U.S. to return the U.S. naval-occupied 
territory of Guantanamo to the island, end the Cold War-era migration 
policy toward Cubans, and to respect Cuban sovereignty by halting all 
funding of anti-government groups.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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