UN condemns US economic embargo of Cuba though more nations sit out after Trump administration push

The U.N. Gen­er­al As­sem­bly con­demned the U.S. eco­nom­ic em­bar­go of Cu­ba for the 34th year on Wednes­day, even as Wash­ing­ton’s cam­paign to in­flu­ence the out­come led to a num­ber of coun­tries vot­ing against the res­o­lu­tion or sit­ting out the de­ci­sion for the first time.

The vote was 130-17, with 25 ab­sten­tions — a no­table de­crease in sup­port from last year, when more than 160 na­tions sup­port­ed the mea­sure and on­ly 12 ab­stained. While such res­o­lu­tions at the U.N. Gen­er­al As­sem­bly are not legal­ly bind­ing, they do re­flect world opin­ion.

For the first time in 34 years, West­ern coun­tries like Ger­many, Italy and Latvia were among those that re­frained from vot­ing. Bosnia, Colom­bia, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Ecuador, Lithua­nia, Mo­roc­co, North Mace­do­nia, Paraguay and Slove­nia are among those mem­ber states that vot­ed no — most for the first time.

It marks a stun­ning shift in in­ter­na­tion­al sup­port at a time when the small is­land coun­try weath­ers out­ages, short­ages and oth­er deep­en­ing fi­nan­cial trou­bles as the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion looks to force changes to Cu­ba’s po­lit­i­cal sys­tem by in­creas­ing an al­ready pun­ish­ing eco­nom­ic cam­paign. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump last week once again raised the spec­tre of U.S. mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion, say­ing Amer­i­can war­ships could stop over in Cu­ba on their way back from the Iran war.

“A great pow­er is at­tack­ing through eco­nom­ic war a mem­ber state of this or­ga­ni­za­tion,” Cuban For­eign Min­is­ter Bruno Ro­dríguez said ahead of the vote. “Cu­ba is not a threat. The block­ade is a threat.”

U.S. Am­bas­sador to the U.N. Mike Waltz told mem­ber na­tions that, “your vote to­day is the on­ly thing stand­ing be­tween the cor­rupt, klep­to­crat­ic com­mu­nist regime and us­ing this body and your vote for an­oth­er pro­pa­gan­da vic­to­ry at the ex­pense of the Cuban peo­ple.”

Ten­sions be­tween Wash­ing­ton and Ha­vana have spilled over in­to fiery pub­lic spats at the Unit­ed Na­tions. On Tues­day, Waltz and Ro­dríguez got in­to a shout­ing match on the floor of the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly while de­bat­ing the em­bar­go res­o­lu­tion.

Short­ly af­ter Waltz had be­gun his crit­i­cism of the so­cial­ist gov­ern­ment, Ro­dríguez walked down to the podi­um where the U.S. en­voy was ad­dress­ing the hall and called him a liar while try­ing to get a point of or­der from the of­fi­cial pre­sid­ing over the ses­sion.

“This in­di­vid­ual needs to back away from this podi­um. He’s not go­ing to in­tim­i­date me in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca,” Waltz said as U.N. se­cu­ri­ty and per­son­nel tried to in­ter­vene. “You un­der­stand who you’re deal­ing with? This is Amer­i­ca. Back up.”

In a post on X, Ro­dríguez re­mind­ed Waltz where he was mak­ing his re­marks, say­ing he’s at the U.N., not at a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty meet­ing at the White House.

“With his crude lies at the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly, the U.S. gov­ern­ment has launched an­oth­er des­per­ate at­tempt to jus­ti­fy its eco­nom­ic ag­gres­sion against Cu­ba and its crim­i­nal en­er­gy block­ade,” he con­tin­ued.

A week ear­li­er, a sim­i­lar in­ter­ac­tion be­tween Waltz and his Cuban coun­ter­part, Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, took place out­side a U.S.-host­ed pan­el with Cuban dis­si­dents and for­mer pris­on­ers that sought to high­light al­le­ga­tions of the op­pres­sive be­hav­ior of the is­land’s gov­ern­ment.

It all re­flects a clear break from the tra­di­tion­al diplo­mat­ic deco­rum ex­pect­ed at the U.N. and the new phase of con­tentious­ness be­tween the U.S. and Cu­ba.

The U.S. em­bar­go against Cu­ba was first im­posed in 1960 af­ter Fi­del Cas­tro led a rev­o­lu­tion that top­pled dic­ta­tor Ful­gen­cio Batista and na­tion­al­ized prop­er­ties be­long­ing to U.S. cit­i­zens and cor­po­ra­tions.

As a re­sult, the Caribbean coun­try has spent decades fac­ing the dire im­pact of long­time eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial trou­bles and is now be­ing pushed to a break­ing point af­ter Trump an­nounced in late Jan­u­ary that he would im­pose tar­iffs on any coun­try that sells or pro­vides oil to Cu­ba.

The warn­ing has ef­fec­tive­ly cut off fu­el to the is­land, lead­ing to wide­spread pow­er out­ages that im­pact ba­sic ser­vices such as wa­ter sup­ply and in­ter­net and tele­phone ser­vices. —UNIT­ED NA­TIONS (AP)

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Sto­ry by FARNOUSH AMIRI | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Dáni­ca Co­to in San Juan, Puer­to Ri­co, con­tributed to this re­port.