U.S. shifts, sits out U.N. Cuba embargo vote

Cuban students cheer the U.N. vote results Wednesday during a University of Havana watch party that was organized by Cuban officials. It featured live state news coverage broadcast on a big-screen television.
Cuban students cheer the U.N. vote results Wednesday during a University of Havana watch party that was organized by Cuban officials. It featured live state news coverage broadcast on a big-screen television.

UNITED NATIONS -- The U.S. abstained Wednesday for the first time in 25 years on a U.N. resolution condemning the United States' economic embargo against Cuba, a measure it always had vehemently voted against.

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AP

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez (left) is embraced Wednesday by Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian Authority ambassador to the U.N., after the approval of a resolution condemning the U.S. embargo against Cuba.

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AP

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power follows the proceedings Wednesday at U.N. headquarters. “After 55-plus years of pursuing the path of isolation, we are choosing to take the path of engagement,” Power said on Cuba.

The U.S. was joined in abstaining by Israel, the only other country to vote against the embargo resolution in the General Assembly last year. When the vote -- 191-0 with two abstentions -- was shown on the electronic board, diplomats from the 193 U.N. member states burst into applause.

U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power announced the abstention just before the vote, saying that the U.S. policy of isolation toward Cuba had "isolated the United States, including here at the United Nations."

"After 55-plus years of pursuing the path of isolation, we are choosing to take the path of engagement," she said.

Each year, the U.N. General Assembly votes overwhelmingly to urge the United States to end its economic embargo of the island. In 2015, the vote was 191-2, with only Israel joining in a vote against the measure.

The U.S. decision to change its vote comes after President Barack Obama's restoration of full diplomatic relations with Cuba and his support for lifting the embargo, which the Republican-led Congress is against.

Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced Dec. 17, 2014, that they were restoring diplomatic ties, which were broken in 1961 after Fidel Castro took power and installed a communist government. On July 20, 2015, diplomatic relations were restored and embassies of the two countries were reopened, but serious issues remain, especially the U.S. call for human rights on the Caribbean island and claims for expropriated property.

The U.S. abstention in the General Assembly vote was certain to anger both Republican and Democratic opponents of lifting the 55-year-old embargo, but it reflects Obama's belief shortly before he leaves office that it's time to move ahead in normalizing U.S.-Cuban ties.

Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, the last speaker before the vote, said Cuba is "grateful" for Power's efforts and words and thanked her for the U.S. abstention.

"A change in vote by the United States is a promising signal," he said. "We hope it will be reflected in reality."

Rodriguez said the embargo, calling it a "flagrant violation of international law," is still in force and being implemented by U.S. agencies, and while the executive measures taken by Obama were positive, they have "very limited scope and effect."

"The president of the United States has ample executive prerogatives that he has not fully used, as he could still do to substantially modify the practical implementation of the blockade and its economic and humanitarian impact," he said. "Lifting the blockade is the key to be able to advance towards the normalization of relations with the United States. ... The blockade is unjust, inhuman, immoral and illegal and should unilaterally and unconditionally cease."

Obama has called on lawmakers to lift the sanctions. But while several bills have been introduced to do that, Congress has not acted. Some members have objected that despite increasing normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations, the island's government continues to violate the human rights of its citizens with political arrests and other restrictions.

Congressional anger

Indeed, there were immediate protests in the U.S. Congress.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez from New Jersey, the son of Cuban immigrants, tweeted that the U.S. decision not to defend the "long-standing, bipartisan, human rights-based US law ... is shameful." Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas tweeted that the act that imposed sanctions on Cuba "isn't a 'failed policy' ... [and] is the law of the United States, which should always be defended and upheld."

U.S. Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart and Sen. Marco Rubio, all Republicans from Florida, also blasted the abstention, saying the Obama administration had failed to honor and defend U.S. laws in an international forum.

Diaz-Balart said the U.S. should stand in solidarity with the Cuban people, "rather than siding once again with their oppressors." Rubio accused the United Nations of giving "voice and legitimacy" to America's adversaries.

"It's no surprise the United Nations would endorse economic concessions to the Castro regime," Rubio said. "But it is shameful for the Obama administration to refuse to abide by existing U.S. law and to dismiss the will of the American people."

Mauricio Claver-Carone, executive director of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, a political action committee, called it "perhaps the most egregious breach" of Obama's constitutional responsibilities and oath of office.

Those working to lift the embargo said the vote acknowledged that the "obsolete" policy had no place in international affairs.

"As Cuba continues to play a growing and constructive global role, our policy of isolation not only weakens our international credibility but threatens our national security, as well as our economic and human-rights interests in the region and around the world," said James Williams, the president of Engage Cuba, a coalition of people and organizations working to lift the embargo.

Embargo's critics

General Assembly resolutions are nonbinding and unenforceable. But the 25-year-old exercise in which the world body has overwhelmingly voted to condemn the embargo does reflect world opinion and has given Cuba a global stage to demonstrate the United States' isolation on its Cuba policy.

A U.N. report estimated that the embargo has inflicted more than $1 trillion in accumulated economic damage over more than 50 years.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called the embargo the "most unjust, severe and long-lived system" of sanctions ever applied against a country.

Before the vote, more than 20 speakers from all over the world denounced the embargo and urged the U.S. Congress to quickly lift the ban on trade and financial dealings.

The U.S. administration had considered abstaining from the vote a year ago, but concluded it could not do so because the resolution did not reflect what it considered to be the spirit of engagement between Obama and Raul Castro.

Power made clear that the United States "categorically" rejects statements in Wednesday's resolution suggesting the embargo violated international law.

She also said that abstaining "does not mean that the United States agrees with all of the policies and practices of the Cuban government. We do not.

"We are profoundly concerned by the serious human-rights violations that the Cuban government continues to commit with impunity against its own people."

She cited Cuba's detention of government critics, threats and intimidation of participants in peaceful marches and meetings, and severe restrictions on outside information.

But the United States and Cuba, she said, "must continue to find ways to engage, even as our differences persist. Today, we have taken another small step to be able to do that. May there be many more -- including, we hope, finally ending the U.S. embargo."

In Havana, Cuba organized a vote-watching party on the campus of the University of Havana, where students and government supporters followed the events on an hourslong special live state news broadcast projected onto a giant screen.

The tone of the coverage was triumphant, calling the U.S. abstention a historic victory for Cuba but cautioning that it was meaningless without congressional action.

"The blockade is still in force but this means that there's been a change in attitude at the highest levels of U.S. government and politics," said Raul Palmeiro, a 21-year-old law student and president of the university's official Student Federation.

Information for this article was contributed by Edith M. Lederer, Matthew Lee, Josh Lederman and Michael Weissenstein of The Associated Press; by Karen DeYoung of The Washington Post; and by Franco Ordonez of Tribune News Service.

A Section on 10/27/2016

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