By Antoni Slodkowski
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 28 (Reuters) – The UN General Assembly overwhelmingly urged an end to the decades-long US economic embargo on Cuba on Wednesday, but a US lobbying push led several countries to oppose the resolution or abstain for the first time in years.
The results showed 130 nations in favor of the resolution, 25 abstaining and 17 countries, including the US and Israel, voting against. That compared with a tally of 165-7, with 12 abstentions, last year. Several Western countries, including Germany and Italy, abstained for the first time in many years.
The UN vote carries political weight, but only the US Congress can lift the Cold War-era embargo. The 193-member UN General Assembly has adopted the resolution annually for more than three decades — except for 2020 during the COVID pandemic.
“I’m satisfied that so many countries now, including major economies like Korea, like Germany, and others have shifted their position,” the US envoy to the UN Mike Waltz told reporters after the vote.
“Diplomacy takes time, but now that we’ve had a tripling of countries that have shifted, we expect that to only to continue to grow,” he said.
The tensions between the two nations at the UN escalated ahead of the vote, including shouting matches between Cuban and US diplomats at the UN last week, as well as yelling and shoving on the floor of the General Assembly on Tuesday.
SHOVING AND EXPULSION
On Wednesday, Waltz accused a Cuban diplomat of “assaulting an American diplomat” during the Tuesday exchanges, adding that Richard Tur de la Concepcion, a first secretary at Cuba’s UN mission, will be expelled from the US.
“That Cuban first secretary will be on a plane out of the country back to Havana today,” Waltz told reporters at the UN.
Cuba’s UN mission did not immediately respond to questions on the expulsion.
The US has maintained a trade embargo on Cuba for more than 60 years and US President Donald Trump’s administration has been stepping up the pressure, after using the military in January to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said on X after the vote that the “US government is once again isolated in its attempt to continue strangling the Cuban people and subjecting them to an act of collective punishment and genocide.”
“Neither its most insane pretexts nor its pressures nor media circus will prevail over the force of facts and truth,” he said.
The United States has voted against the UN resolutions since 1992 but abstained for the first time in 2016 under former President Barack Obama, as Washington and Havana forged a closer relationship.
Cuba has blamed US sanctions for the crisis the country is mired in, the worst economic downturn in decades characterized by shortages of basic goods, collapsing infrastructure and runaway inflation.
Last month, Trump said at the UN that Cuba was a failed state and freedom would be coming to the island nation.
Cuba’s electrical grid suffered a total collapse last month, plunging the island into darkness and leaving millions without power.
(Reporting by Antoni Slodkowski; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
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