Havana accuses US of blackmailing countries to change UN vote on embargo

O cuban foreign minister today denounced “unprecedented external pressures” of “coercion and blackmail” by Washington over several UN countries to change the sense of vote in the next debate on the island embargo.

Bruno Rodríguez said during a press conference in Havana that the administration of the US President, Donald Trump, has been applying “a set of methods that constitute a genuine policy of coercion and blackmail” to several countries, if they vote, in the debate of the UN General Assembly scheduled for next week, in favour of the Cuban draft resolution condemning the US (US) embargo.

He specifically referred to threats of “punitive customs rights, ending cooperation programmes, interfering in electoral processes, encouraging coups in the State, politically destabilising these countries or applying secondary sanctions, as well as refusing visas to government officials and their families”.

The head of Cuban diplomacy presented documents released by the U.S. Department of State inviting foreign delegations to events at the United Nations headquarters in New York, with the aim of “obliging a group of countries to change their position on the embargo”.

“The State Department has reached the height of ridicule, because it is a recognition of the intense actions, reaching the point of asking certain countries, which for decades have a traditional vote, to leave the room or abstain,” Rodríguez said by showing a video of the US ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, to make this request.

He also said that “it is surprising that the US is using a Latin American country as a puppet to force a group of countries to change their position on the embargo,” although he did not specify which country he was referring to.

Rodríguez explained that in the UN debate scheduled for the next 27 and 28, for the first time the General Assembly will also “pronounce itself through a resolution” on the energy blockade imposed by Washington since January, which interrupted all fuel imports to the Caribbean island.

“ No pretext related to the obstinate goal of the US, which is a political change in Cuba, nor any political divergence between governments,” he said.

“ Will the sovereign states of the planet allow American laws to be applied in their territories or that the jurisdiction of the US courts applies in their countries?”, the Cuban Foreign Minister asked, adding that in the debate next week, “no one can wash their hands”.