By Tamara Khandaker and Reuters via aljazeera.com
Cuba has accused the United States of threatening countries with tariffs, visa restrictions and other retaliatory measures in an effort to get them to change their votes on an upcoming United Nations resolution calling for an end to the long-running embargo against the island.
Every year, a majority in the UN General Assembly votes in favour of a nonbinding resolution seeking a stop to the US embargo, which began in the early 1960s.
The embargo, considered the longest in modern history, has been credited with exacerbating economic hardship on the island.
But on Wednesday, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said that the administration of US President Donald Trump was seeking to pressure members of the UN General Assembly to vote against the resolution this year.
He explained that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Washington’s ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz were personally leading the campaign, which he alleged had been going on for months.
“It is a new and dangerous way of conducting multilateral diplomacy,” Rodriguez wrote in a statement on the social media platform X. “It reflects the impotence of those who know they are in the wrong and whose only remaining recourse is force.”