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 News from Around the Americas | November 2005 
Bush Ignores UN Vote Against Cuba Blockade
 Circles Robinson - Prensa Latina
| | Cuban President Fidel Castro gestures while addressing the audience in Havana, October 28, 2005. While the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba has been in place since 1962, three years after Castro came to power in a revolution, President Bush's administration has been tightening the screws to try and bring about political change. (Reuters/Claudia Daut) |
Havana - Fresh off a near unanimous rebuke from the United Nations General Assembly on the 45-year US blockade of Cuba, President George W. Bush may be headed to further increase tensions with the island.
Press reports out of Washington on Wednesday 9th note that a reshuffling of Bush administration officials in positions that affect US policy on Cuba could mean even greater hostility in its longstanding attempt to overthrow the government headed by Fidel Castro.
On Tuesday the UN voted 182-4 in favor of a Cuban resolution demanding the US end its unilateral and extra-territorial blockade. Even Washington´s close allies like the United Kingdom, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Colombia and Japan voted with Cuba.
One issue being mentioned by hawks like Otto Reich, closely allied to administration policy in Latin America, is provoking an immigration crisis by allowing Cuban emigrants captured at sea by the US Coast Guard to automatically become US residents, just as those who reach American soil under the Cuban Adjustment Act.
Another issue is cracking down on the nations that voted against the blockade by punishing their businesspeople for investing in Cuba. Among the new faces are Thomas Shannon as the assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, the governments point main for the region.
Shannon had held the post of White House National Security Council for Latin America. His replacement is Dan Fisk, a former associate of former Senator Jesse Helms, co-writer of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which tightened the blockade.
Other new faces in recent months are Michael Parmly the new head of the US Interests Section in Havana and Stephen McFarland, who heads the State Department´s Cuba Affairs office. Parmly has held recent posts in Bosnia and Afghanistan while McFarland comes off a conflictive diplomatic mission in Venezuela.
A key player in the strategy to undermine the Cuban economy and promote subversion on the island is Caleb McCarry, the "Cuba transition coordinator."
His mandate is to implement the recommendations of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, which the people in the island have denounced as an annexation plan.
The high-level commission drafted a 450-page report that outlines Washington´s strategy to take control of the island. Rightwing Cuban-American groups based in Miami are hoping that McCarry will tighten the screws on Cuba and further damage its economy.
These organizations, which have not hesitated to back terrorist acts against the island and its officials, are hoping that new extra-territorial sanctions would hit Europeans and Canadians who invest in Cuba.
According to the Cuban Foreign Ministry the nearly half century US blockade has cost the island over 82 billion dollars in losses or added expenses.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is reportedly gung ho on putting a greater focus on Cuba and Latin America.
President Bush just returned from the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina where he met stiff resistance to his continental free trade scheme to benefit US corporations and faced massive demonstrations against his presence.
The author is an American writer and translator who is currently based in Havana. |
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