UNITED NATIONS: Making a bit of history, the United States on Wednesday abstained for the first time in an annual General Assembly condemnation of the half-century-old US trade embargo against Cuba.
The abstention — a break from the “no” vote the US delegation has always cast — was another signal by the Obama administration of its intention to fully repair relations with Cuba, including an end to the embargo.
The reconciliation began two years ago when President Barack Obama abandoned his predecessors’ policy of isolating the Castro government in Cuba and moved to restore diplomatic ties with the island nation of 11 million.
The US and Cuba formally re-established embassies in each other’s capitals in July 2015, ending more than more than five decades of Cold War-era enmity. But the embargo, which can only be rescinded by Congress, remains in force.
A General Assembly resolution condemning the embargo, proposed every year since 1991, had become something of a ritual at the UN, used by Cuba and many others to castigate the US. The lone US ally on this issue, Israel, also changed its vote on Wednesday to abstain.
The vote was 191 in favour, none opposed and the two abstentions.
Word of the new American position had spread among diplomats in the hours before the vote, and when the US ambassador, Samantha Power, announced the change in the General Assembly hall, she beamed as other delegates applauded.
Power called the resolution “a perfect example of why the US policy of isolation toward Cuba was not working — or worse, how it was actually undermining the very goals it set out to achieve”.
But she also said that “abstaining on this resolution does not mean that the United States agrees with all of the policies and practices of the Cuban government”.
The Cuban foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, who came to the UN for the vote, thanked Power for the abstention and acknowledged the progress made so far in improved ties.
Nonetheless, Rodriguez devoted most of his prepared remarks to criticising the embargo and exhorting the Obama administration to do more.
“The human damages caused by the blockade are incalculable,” he said in the official English translation of his remarks. “There isn’t any Cuban family or sector in our country that has not suffered from its effects.”
He mused that under other changes the administration has decreed regarding Cuba — some only a few weeks ago — Americans who visit can bring home Cuban products with no limit in value, including rum and cigars.
“However, the exports of those products to the United States continue to be banned,” Rodriguez said.
The Obama administration has taken a number of steps to ease the embargo’s effects, which have severely constrained Cuba’s economy. Under the relaxation, the US has permitted some increased commerce, resumed regularly scheduled airline flights and eased limits on visits by tourists and family members.
But these measures have been done by executive power. The abstention at the UN effectively sharpens the confrontation between the administration and the Republican-led Congress over the issue.
Republican critics of Obama’s Cuba policy have repeatedly denounced what they call the administration’s capitulation to an authoritarian Communist government run for decades by Fidel Castro and later his brother, Raul.
“In today’s UN vote, President Obama continues to side with Castro regime instead of standing with the Cuban people,” Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, Republican-Florida, an outspoken opponent of improved ties, said in a Twitter message.
