Cuba

NAM protests at arbitrariness in the Security Council
Cuba has protested at the application of “an arbitrary and selective interpretation” that prevented the island from addressing the Security Council as president of the Non-Aligned Movement, it was announced this Monday at UN headquarters, PL reports.

Cuba had asked to speak in the name of the powerful bloc of 118 Non-Aligned countries during a closed-doors session of the Security Council last Friday, devoted to the situation in Myanmar.

That petition “was totally justified and perfectly in line with the provisional regulations of that body,” noted Rodrigo Malmierca Díaz, Cuban ambassador to the UN, in a letter that was circulating yesterday as an official Security Council document.
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U.S. has multiplied million-dollar losses to the Cuban economy
The Cuban economy has lost approximately $4.186 billion this year as a consequence of the intensification of the blockade imposed by the United States, confirmed First Deputy Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla.

During a press conference in Havana, Rodríguez presented details of the Cuban resolution to be discussed and voted on at the UN General Assembly, demanding the end of a policy that he described as "genocidal and aberrant."

He specified that the financial total of the damage refers to the period between the last occasion on which the vote took place in 2005 and the current period, and the elevated cost is due to the fact that the Cuban economy has improved and the blockade has intensified.

The first deputy minister for foreign affairs indicated that in 2005, the White House adopted more brutal measures in the economic sphere that caused greater damage, despite the criticisms this policy has generated for the last 12 years at the UN.

As a consequence, the economic damage suffered by the Cuban people over the last 45 years is in excess of $86 billion, he affirmed, launching a savage attack on the extraterritorial nature of this policy that was condemned by 182 countries last year.

"The need to bring an end to the economic, trade and financial blockade imposed by the government of the United States of America against Cuba," is the title of the document due to be heard next November 8.

The motion, which Cuba has presented to the UN every year since 1992, illustrates that Washington’s punitive act against Cuba is "the most prolonged and cruel policy in the history of humanity (…) and an economic war that can be described as an act of genocide."