SANTIAGO, Cuba - Jubilant Cuban officials on
Wednesday hailed the United Nations' 10th consecutive vote to
condemn the four-decade-old U.S. trade embargo on the Caribbean
island as a crucial victory over its political archenemy.
``Everyone agrees that yesterday's vote was a knockout
blow,'' Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told Cuban state TV
from New York.
``It's a triumph that belongs especially to our people and
to our commander-in-chief,'' he said, referring to Fidel Castro.
In its annual vote on the issue, the U.N. General Assembly
voted Tuesday 167 to 3 -- identical to last year's record vote
-- for an end to the trade sanctions imposed soon after
Castro's 1959 revolution.
Israel and the Marshall Islands voted with Washington, and
three nations abstained -- Latvia, Micronesia and Nicaragua.
Havana was particularly pleased at maintaining the level of
international condemnation of the U.S. sanctions despite the
increased international solidarity for its northern neighbor
since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
``It's a vote similar to last year but in a totally
different context when the world has been told that every
country must decide if it is with the United States or against
it,'' Perez also told the state's nightly ``Round Table'' show.
``It's very significant that in this atmosphere there has
been such a totally majority support for Cuba's position,'' he
added.
During the program, a platform for the Castro government's
views, commentators scoffed at Israel and the Marshall Islands
as subservient to U.S. interests.
'RESOUNDING VICTORY'
Cuba's two daily newspapers -- Granma, the mouthpiece of
the ruling Communist Party, and Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth),
of the Communist Youth movement -- both declared the vote a
''resounding victory'' in front page headlines.
``The United Nations again placed the U.S. blockade under
deserved censure,'' wrote Granma. Juventud Rebelde (Rebel
Youth), lampooned the United States in a cartoon of Uncle Sam
grabbing Israel and the Marshall Islands.
The U.N. vote came a week after the first sale of U.S.
goods to Cuba in four decades. In a deal expedited by
Washington for humanitarian reasons, Havana bought $20 million
in food from U.S. firms to replace stocks used after Hurricane
Michelle, which caused widespread destruction on Nov. 4.
Both Cuban and U.S. officials have said the transactions
did not represent a breakthrough in political relations or an
end to the embargo, but some analysts see them as the start of
a process of chipping away at the sanctions.
Senior Cuban officials and state commentators were
blistering in their condemnation Wednesday of the embargo,
which Havana says has cost the island of 11 million inhabitants
$70 billion or 15 years of lost development.
Health Minister Carlos Dotres said the embargo had deprived
Cubans of vital medicines, and he also revived Havana's
accusations that Washington has carried out a ``chemical war''
against the island alongside the embargo.
``There is a bacteriological war aimed at plants, at
harvests, at animals and at people, like the dengue epidemic in
1981,'' he said, referring to an outbreak of the disease that
killed 158 Cubans and made more than 350,000 ill.
Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited
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