The Cuban Embassy in Phnom Penh has launched a news offensive in preparation for a UN General Assembly vote on a resolution calling for the US to lift its economic blockade on Cuba.
The US imposed the blockade on the island nation after Communist revolutionaries, led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, toppled the US-backed capitalist regime of Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
Cuban Ambassador Nirsia Castro Guevara said Thursday that she hoped that on Nov 4 UN member countries will vote overwhelmingly in support of the resolution, as they did in the UN General Assembly vote on the resolution last year.
In the coming days, Cuban embassies around the world plan to hold news conferences condemning the US policy.
The news conference comes after US President George W Bush’s Oct 10 speech announcing new economic restrictions and harsher punishments for US citizens or companies not complying with the blockade.
Reporters were treated to soda and sweet coffee as Castro Guevara called the decades-old US policy ridiculous and genocidal.
For the assertion of ridiculousness, she cited, among other things, the seizure of a Cuban fruit-juice boat during a stopover in the US state of California, en route to Japan.
For the assertion of genocide, she provided a July UN report on Cuba. The report calculated a 44-year total of more than $72 billion in economic damages spurred by the blockade.
Castro Guevara said that Cuba was a natural business partner for the US, but “the powerful US media and the Cuban-American mafia in South Florida have demonized the Cuban political system that the Cuban people have freely chosen.”
A US Embassy official, who declined to be named, said the Cuban Embassy made two mistakes in its Thursday news conference.
“That they would think that the US would care about [the UN resolution] anyway is not very realistic,” the official said. “And that they would talk about it in Cambodia is sort of like one hand clapping.”
