Maravi

UN votes over US sanctions on Cuba

UN votes over US sanctions on Cuba
Tuesday, October 28, 2008 5:30:28 PM

THE United Nations General Assembly tomorrow (Wednesday) votes on a resolution demanding the US to lift its nearly 50-year-old financial and economic sanctions against Cuba. The vote would be the 17th consecutive time the UN would be asking the US government to end its policy that has cost Cuba a conservative US $93 billion dollars.

Last year 184 countries supported the motion but to the contrary the US administration tightened it lid on Cuba. In 2007 four countries opposed the ending of the embargo while one abstained. According to the report before the UN General Assembly, the Government of the United States of America was alone its policy of economic war against Cuba.

"The economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed during 50 years by the United States is the main obstacle to Cuba's development, to the well-being of Cubans and in present circumstances to the tasks carried out by our people to recover from substantial damage caused by hurricanes Gustav and Ike," reads the
report in part.

"According to very conservative calculation and only considering what has been
possible to quantify to date, the blockade caused during 2007 economic damage to Cuba amounting to US $3,775 million. Since inception the blockade notwithstanding other aggressions has caused damage amounting to more than US $93 billion. At the present value of the dollar this amounts to US $224,600 million."

Gustav and Ike left damages estimated at US $5billion and under embargo terms, Cuba is not allowed to purchase necessary recovery materials from the US or any firm in third countries as long as such company had ties with American firms.

In 2007, the report stated, the sanctions were more brutal as there was "an irrational persecution against North American companies, banks and citizens and those of third countries even through the blocking of internet sites regarding Cuba."


Today's vote and the immediate reaction by the US government would inform the world whether decisions of the UN General Assembly remained academic exercises when it came to the only superpower, the US. The past has shown that the vote on the necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade by the US against Cuba had been ignored by the US.

But only last week the European Union lifted its sanctions against Cuba even when the US asked its European allies not to do so.

It remains to be seen what the US, currently trying to rise from an economic downturn and a battered international image, would do to the tiny island of Cuba only 90 miles away from Miami, Florida.

Labels: CUBA, SANCTIONS, UN

posted by MrK @ 5:31 PM