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Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Change Fidel can believe in? UN again calls for lifting of U.S. embargo

UNITED NATIONS — The Castro brothers must be celebrating! For the seventeenth consecutive year, the UN General Assembly has overwhelmingly called for a lifting of the Cuban embargo which dates back to 1962 and the Kennedy Administration. The vote saw 185 in favor of the lifting the embargo, with only the USA, Israel, and Palau against and with two abstentions. The ballot in the cavernous hall of the General Assembly was carried live on Cuban TV stations, Fidel-1 and Raul 2, no doubt to an enthralled audience.

The backdrop for this year’s vote was particularly curious; Father Miguel D’Escoto, the Nicaraguan Sandinista, is the Assembly President after all, and the pure enthusiasm for a sea change in Washington’s long bi-partisan Cuba policy is in the wind. Cuba’s Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told correspondents that he expects the next U.S. president to heed world opinion and to lift the 47 year old embargo on his Caribbean country.

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As Cuba’s communist newspaper Granma proudly stated, Assembly President D’Ecsoto proclaimed that the economic blockade is an expression of Washington’s “sick obsession” with Cuba. He added that the “U.S. government simply cannot tolerate the existence of a place like Cuba which rises up like a heroine of solidarity and a champion of the values that the world needs for the survival of the human species.” Earlier in his tenure D’Escoto offered equally mind-numbing rationalizations for Russian aggression in Georgia.

The non-binding Assembly vote is clearly a diplomatic victory for Havana, as not only the communists, non-aligned and Third World states supported the resolution but so did Canada, the European Union, Japan and just about everybody else. For weeks the Cuban UN Mission has been lobbying for this result and no doubt can be proud of the outcome.

There’s no secret that the Europeans and Canada maintain lucrative trade and tourism links with Castro’s Cuba. It’s more unfortunate though that a once more principled European Union foreign policy regarding Cuba’s human rights violations, its imprisoned political dissidents and lack of press freedoms have recently been shelved in favor of more trade and commerce. This clearly parallels the United States own policy shifts towards the People’s Republic of China where trade policy clearly trumps human rights concerns.

Though the Cuban economy stands at the bottom of the global list just before North Korea in the 2008 Index of Economic Freedom, the Castro regime has long claimed that the embargo has proven a damaging deadweight on its on economic development and trade. Paradoxically this year given the devastating losses suffered from two serious hurricane hits on the island, Cuba is tragically shattered. During September Hurricane “Gustav” and “Ike’ slammed into Cuba ruining a third of agriculture and damaging or destroying more than 400,000 homes.

Ironically because of the embargo, needed humanitarian supplies face a bureaucratic bottleneck in getting to Cuba. Writing in the Miami Herald, Jorge Mas Santos Chairman of the Cuban-American National Foundation, states that he “strongly supports a policy that uses the embargo and effective sanctions against the oppressive regime but is accompanied by a proactive approach that empowers the Cuban people to enact change from within.”

The group calls for allowing Cuban/Americans to send humanitarian aid to family members inside Cuba through suspending certain provisions of the embargo. Jorge Mas opposes the blocking of “person-to-person humanitarian assistance to Cuban victims of the most destructive hurricane season in Cuban history. ” Thus loosening restrictions on humanitarian aid could break the stranglehold the government holds over supplies and aid by allowing in outside assistance.

Indeed since the 1960’s, Castro’s regime has figured in the American presidential elections. This year, both Senators John McCain and Barack Obama have pledged to re-focus American policies; McCain favoring a freedom agenda for Cuba with Obama favoring negotiations with the communist rulers. Both political parties have long courted the powerful Cuban-American community as a key to winning elections in Florida.

Yet as Jorge Mas advises, “By refusing to move beyond the status quo policy, Washington has strangely, or maybe predictably, embraced a policy of accommodation. Waiting for Raúl Castro to reform is not a strategy; it is wishful thinking, it is surrendering a critical juncture in Cuba’s history that could make all the difference.”

Until that time the ruling Castro brothers can revel in their UN victory, and smoke a celebratory Cohiba cigar and drink a Havana Club “Cuba Libre.”


John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.
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