UN again votes against Cuba embargo, but support falls to 30-year low; US expels a Cuban diplomat

The UN General Assembly on Wednesday adopted, as it does every year, a resolution calling on the United States to end its embargo on Cuba, but with the lowest support since 1995. The resolution received 130 votes in favor, 17 against and 25 abstentions, while a year earlier it had been backed by 165 countries. The US and Israel voted against.

A shift in the vote

According to Euronews, Germany, Italy and Latvia abstained for the first time in 34 years, while Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Morocco, Slovenia and Bosnia voted against, many of them for the first time. US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz said he was pleased that several countries, including Germany and South Korea, had changed position. He denied that Cuba is under a blockade and said the Cuban people's plight is exclusively the fault of the “corrupt communist regime.”

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez accused Washington of seeking to “determine the nation's destiny” and to “seize” the country's wealth. General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, and lifting the embargo, in force since 1960, requires changes to US law, where Congress has the decisive role.

Scuffle in the chamber and an expulsion

The debate was tense. Rodríguez approached Waltz and accused him of lying, while the US ambassador told him to back away. Afterward, according to ATSH, citing DPA, the US expelled a diplomat from Cuba's UN delegation whose name was not made public. Waltz said Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed the order and accused the diplomat of shoving a US diplomat and trying to strike them. “This is America. Stay back!” Waltz said. In a letter to Secretary-General António Guterres, Cuba claims its diplomat was provoked by a US representative.