The Foreign Minister of Cuba, Bruno Rodríguez, refuted this Tuesday the speech of the US ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, accusing him of lying during the debate in the General Assembly on the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by Washington against the island.
While Waltz spoke before the plenary, Rodríguez asked to speak and stated that “the permanent representative of the United States not only lies, substantively deviating from the topic, but also expresses himself in a rude and arrogant manner against his presidency,” in reference to the president of the Assembly, Annalena Baerbock.
The Cuban diplomat asserted that the words of the American representative go “against the dignity of this Assembly and the member states.” He emphasized that Waltz expresses himself “with a lack of culture, rudeness and rudeness that is not accepted in this democratic venue” and reminded the US ambassador that “this is the United Nations General Assembly, it is not a Signal group or the House of Representatives.”
Foreign Minister Rodríguez leads the Cuban delegation present in New York to participate until Wednesday in the discussion and voting of the General Assembly draft resolution that calls for lifting the blockade imposed by Washington for more than 60 years.
Previously, the diplomat warned that Donald Trump’s Government carried out a “pressure campaign» on several countries to modify their position of support for the UN resolution against the blockade.
The Cuban authorities have repeatedly denounced the negative impact of the US blockade, affecting the country’s development and violating the rights of the population. Official data record that the blockade has caused damages of 7,556 million dollars in the last year, an increase of 49% compared to the previous period.
Firm support from Venezuela to Cuba
For his part, Venezuela’s ambassador to the UN, Samuel Moncada, described as “criminal” the blockade imposed on Cuba, which is a “free, independent and sovereign nation, a full member of this General Assembly.”
«The blockade continues to cause deep losses of more than $5 billion a year; enormous suffering caused in health, education, access to energy and food. The accumulation of economic asphyxiation imposed from abroad for generations is equivalent to the destruction caused by a war,” he emphasized.
Moncada asserted that the blockade is an “act of economic war,” whose objective is to “defeat an entire people through hunger, illness and death.” “This is the truth that they want to hide when they call this crime a simple political measure,” he said.
Likewise, he said that from Venezuela one can speak with knowledge of the facts, since “we are the target of a similar attack by the US imperial regime.” He recalled that, in the last 10 years, suffering has been caused to the Venezuelan people through a policy that has attempted to “murder Venezuelans through suffering”, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Moncada also rejected attempts to link Cuba to the Ukrainian conflict, calling this action a “disinformation maneuver” manufactured in the State Department’s media laboratories.
Likewise, he condemned that Cuba is on the supposed list of countries that sponsor terrorism, a decision that he considered an insult to truth and history; and warned that Washington’s coercive policies are part of a broader strategy that seeks to impose its hegemony over Latin America and the Caribbean.
