Reuters
November 27, 2001
By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. General Assembly, for the 10th consecutive year, voted overwhelmingly Tuesday for an end to the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, with Havana saying not even most Americans approved of the 4-decade-old sanctions.

The vote was 167-3, identical to last year's record vote. Those opposing the resolution, in addition to the United States, were Israel and the Marshall Islands, the same countries who supported Washington in 2000.

Nations abstaining were Latvia, Micronesia and Nicaragua. All three nations abstained last year, in addition to Morocco.

Despite strong U.N. support for American positions since the Sept. 11 attack against the United States, sympathy for Cuba's financial plight and condemnation of the blockade remained unchanged.

The 15 members of the European Union all voted in favor of the nonbinding resolution because of U.S. laws that seek to prevent foreign firms from having commercial dealings with Cuba. Belgium, speaking for the EU, said Europeans deplored the consequences of the embargo on the Cuban people.

Speaker after speaker, especially those from developing countries, said the unilateral embargo was a violation of the U.N. Charter, and affected international trade.

The resolution, as in previous years, referred to the 1996 Helms-Burton Act that allowed U.S. citizens who were Cuban citizens before President Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution to file suit in U.S. courts against foreign companies or individuals who "traffic" in expropriated property.

U.S. representative James Cunningham said the trade embargo was designed to promote democracy in Cuba and that the United States had moved dramatically to allow Havana to buy food.

"Cuba, long out of step with the trend of democratization in the world ... has proven itself even more out of step with its recent hideous remarks on the U.S. reaction to the September 11 terrorist attacks," he said.

Havana's foreign minister, Felipe Perez Roque, last month denounced Washington for waging an "ineffective unjustifiable bombing campaign" in Afghanistan.

But Perez, in his address to the assembly Tuesday, detailed the U.S. prohibitions and said Cuba would be willing to reach an agreement "for the nearly 6,000 U.S. companies and citizens" whose properties were nationalized after the 1959 revolution.

However, he couched his unusual offer by saying that "Cuba-recognizes their rights -- and would be willing to reach an agreement that also takes into account the extremely burdensome economic and human hardships inflicted on our country by the blockade."

And he said that putting Cuba on the State Department list of terrorist states was particularly outrageous.

"This is an outrage to the Cuban people, who have in fact, as everyone knows, been the victims of countless terrorist acts organized and financed with total impunity from U.S. territory," Perez said.

"The blockade does not enjoy majority support in the United States," he said.