Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Yesterday, the United Nations General Assembly’s Committee on Socio-Humanitarian Affairs adopted, with 168 yeas and only 7 nays, the draft resolution presented by Cuba, on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement, endorsing the agreement on the constitutional building of the Human Rights Council and definitively removing the mandate that the United States had imposed against Cuba at the now-defunct Commission on Human Rights.

In June of this year, the Human Rights Council, gathered in Geneva, had decided to submit for the UN General Assembly’s consideration a document that defined the way in which such body would operate, which superseded the discredited Commission on Human Rights. In such document, the Human Rights Council recommended the removal of the mandate against Cuba, which the US Government had adopted year after year for two decades through blackmail, threat and coercion. That proposal was now endorsed at the United Nations.

This decision solidifies the victory of our people in its tenacious opposition of the manipulation of the human rights issue that our country was a victim of for twenty years; and it once again reaffirms the international isolation of the US Government’s policy against Cuba.

Within less than a month of the overwhelming rejection, by the UN General Assembly, of the blockade against our country, this proves to be a historic victory.

The United Nations has recognized the righteousness and fairness of the arguments that, without any compromises whatsoever, we have upheld for so many years in order to put a fight in Geneva against the politicized, selective and discriminatory nature of the US Government’s actions against Cuba.

Particularly significant is the fact that Cuba, in its capacity as Chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement, had the responsibility to present the resolution that was adopted despite the nays of the United States, Israel, Canada, Australia, the Marshall Islands, Palau and Micronesia. Another eleven countries, China and Russia among them, co-sponsored the text of the adopted resolution together with the Movement.

Today’s decision has dealt a striking blow to the imperial designs of the Bush Administration against Cuba.

The Washington Government, which was nearly the only one to vote against the inception of the Human Rights Council in 2006, has not been able to muster the necessary support to run as a candidate for such body.

Nor had the US been able to include an amendment in condemnation of Cuba as part of the blockade resolution that was recently adopted or to present a resolution against our country at the UN General Assembly.

In turn, Cuba, which voted in favor of the inception of the Human Rights Council and was elected as a founding member of it with over two-thirds of the votes of the UN countries, has maintained, with ever-increasing prestige, an active participation in the deliberations of such body, even in its process of institutional building, thus defending the legitimate interests of the Third-World countries.

Times have changed. There is an ever-increasing number of countries rising up against imposition and lies.

However, we know that the US Government will not give up on its attempts to manipulate the human rights issue in order to justify its policy of economic war and aggressions against Cuba. But such endeavors are doomed for failure.

This historic victory is the reward for twenty years of battle by our people under Fidel’s guidance, for its heroic resilience, for its unbreakable unity and for its faithfulness to the principles of the Revolution.

Havana, 17 November 2007