Cuba accuses US of threatening nations forward of UN embargo vote | Battle Information

Havana says Washington is threatening nations with retaliation in the event that they refuse to vote in opposition to condemning its embargo.

Cuba has accused america of threatening nations with tariffs, visa restrictions and different retaliatory measures in an effort to get them to vary their votes on an upcoming United Nations decision calling for an finish to the long-running embargo in opposition to the island.

Yearly, a majority within the UN Basic Meeting votes in favour of a nonbinding decision in search of a cease to the US embargo, which started within the early Sixties.

The embargo, thought of the longest in fashionable historical past, has been credited with exacerbating financial hardship on the island.

However on Wednesday, Cuban International Minister Bruno Rodriguez mentioned that the administration of US President Donald Trump was in search of to strain members of the UN Basic Meeting to vote in opposition to the decision this yr.

He defined that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Washington’s ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz had been personally main the marketing campaign, which he alleged had been occurring for months.

“It’s a new and harmful approach of conducting multilateral diplomacy,” Rodriguez wrote in a assertion on the social media platform X. “It displays the impotence of those that know they’re within the improper and whose solely remaining recourse is pressure.”

Rodriguez mentioned US officers had threatened to droop cooperation programmes, deny visas to authorities officers and their households, and even again opposition events in upcoming elections if nations refused to vary their positions.

He additionally accused the US of urging some nations to abstain or skip the vote altogether in the event that they had been unwilling to vote in opposition to Cuba.

Al Jazeera has reached out to the US State Division and the US Mission to the UN for remark, however it didn’t obtain a reply by the point of publication.

Heightening strain on Cuba

The allegations come amid escalating tensions between the 2 nations forward of the vote on the decision, anticipated to happen on October 27 or 28.

The Trump administration has lengthy maintained that the Cuban authorities — not the embargo — is guilty for the nation’s struggling financial system, and it has known as for regime change.

On Monday, Waltz accused Cuban diplomats of harassing and intimidating members at a US-hosted panel on alleged human rights abuses in Cuba.

Cuba’s UN Ambassador Ernesto Soberon Guzman and different representatives had confronted Waltz as he left the occasion at UN headquarters in New York Metropolis.

Talking to reporters afterward, Waltz mentioned that, yearly, the Cuban authorities “propagates a lie by its annual decision”.

“It makes use of excuse after excuse to justify its oppression, to justify the distress of the Cuban individuals, and what we’re doing right here on the US Mission to the UN is exposing these lies,” he mentioned.

In a separate briefing that day, Waltz additionally acknowledged that Washington had been lobbying European nations to rethink their assist for the decision. He pointed to allegations from Ukraine that Cuban nationals combating for Russia weren’t being paid and that the cash was as a substitute going to the Cuban authorities.

“Sure, we’ve requested lots of our European colleagues: Given this proof from the Ukrainian authorities, how can they proceed to vote for this decision that could be a propaganda instrument for the Cuban regime and that’s immediately affecting their nationwide safety?” Waltz mentioned.

The UN Basic Meeting has voted overwhelmingly in assist of resolutions calling for an finish to the US financial embargo on Cuba virtually yearly since 1992. The embargo itself has been in place for greater than six a long time.

Because the begin of 2026, the Trump administration has intensified strain on Cuba by blocking oil provides and threatening tariffs on nations supplying the nation with gasoline, leaving Cubans to face extra extreme shortages of important provides and extended blackouts.