Cuba accuses US of threatening countries ahead of UN embargo vote
Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez alleges Washington is using threats of visa restrictions and economic sanctions to influence next week’s vote. The US State Department had not responded to requests for comment.
Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, accused the United States on October 21 in Havana of threatening UN member states with visa restrictions and economic sanctions to influence an October 27–28 General Assembly vote on the US embargo. The allegations raise a dispute over how countries are being lobbied before the annual resolution; the alleged threats have not been independently established.
What Rodriguez alleges about US pressure
Rodriguez told reporters that US officials had threatened to deny visas and impose trade and economic sanctions on countries that sided with Cuba, Reuters reported. He said the State Department was applying unprecedented pressure to change members’ votes, at times through Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally.
Al Jazeera reported that Rodriguez also alleged threats to suspend cooperation programmes, deny visas to officials’ families and support opposition parties in upcoming elections. He accused Washington of urging countries unwilling to vote against the resolution to abstain or miss the vote. Rodriguez said Rubio and US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz were leading a campaign that had lasted months.
Rodriguez called the alleged tactics ‘a new and dangerous way of conducting multilateral diplomacy’ in a statement on X, according to Al Jazeera. Neither report identified countries that had received the alleged threats or established that any had changed their positions. The State Department had not responded to Reuters’ request for comment on the allegations; Al Jazeera said it had received no reply from either the department or the US Mission to the UN by publication.
US position and the October UN vote
Waltz had earlier called on countries to vote against the resolution, Reuters reported. He described it as ‘an excuse to justify (Cuba’s) oppression, to justify the misery of the Cuban people.’ His public appeal establishes Washington’s opposition to the measure, while Rodriguez’s account of retaliatory threats remains an allegation.
The General Assembly vote is expected on October 27 or 28. Its resolution calls for an end to the US embargo but is nonbinding. The assembly has voted overwhelmingly for such resolutions almost every year since 1992, according to Al Jazeera. The embargo has lasted more than 60 years, and only the US Congress can lift it, Reuters reported. That leaves the upcoming vote politically significant without giving it the power to end the embargo itself.
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Sources and context
- Cuba accuses US of threatening countries ahead of UN embargo voteAl Jazeera; report by Tamara Khandaker and Reuters
- Top Cuban diplomat accuses US of threatening countries that vote with Cuba at United NationsReuters, republished by The Straits Times
AI-assisted article checked against the listed sources. NewsJaws did not conduct interviews or attend the reported events.