By Antoni Slodkowski
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 19 (Reuters) – The United States and Cuba traded accusations at the United Nations on Monday after US diplomats hosted an event featuring Cuban dissidents ahead of next week’s annual UN vote on a resolution calling for an end to a US embargo on the island.
Cuban ambassador to the UN, Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, and other representatives yelled at the US ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, as he left the event at the UN building, which focused on allegations of human rights abuses by the Cuban government.
The tensions between the two nations are rising before the vote on the non-binding resolution, which has passed in the UN General Assembly by wide margins every year since 1992, and amid mounting strain from a US-imposed oil blockade on Cuba.
“I hope you…noted the so-called diplomats from the Cuban embassy here that we allow here by dint of treaty, harassing, yelling, intimidating, and filming not only our just released former political prisoners but others,” Waltz told reporters in New York.
“Year after year, the Cuban regime comes to the General Assembly and propagates a lie through its annual resolution…It uses excuse after excuse to justify its oppression, to justify the misery of the Cuban people, and what we are doing here at the US mission to the UN is exposing those lies,” he said.
The vote is expected to take place on Oct. 27-28, officials said.
The US has maintained a trade embargo on Cuba for more than 60 years and US President Donald Trump’s administration has been stepping up the pressure, after using the military in January to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
The UN vote can carry political weight, but only the US Congress can lift the Cold War-era embargo.
Cuba has blamed US sanctions for the crisis the country is mired in, the worst economic downturn in decades characterized by shortages of basic goods, collapsing infrastructure and runaway inflation.
“The US is acting as an international delinquent, enforcing collective punishment on the people of Cuba. They are inflicting immense suffering upon the whole population of a peaceful nation,” Guzmán, the Cuban ambassador, said at an impromptu gathering outside the US meeting with dissidents.
Last month, Trump said at the UN that Cuba was a failed state and freedom would be coming to the island nation.
Cuba’s electrical grid suffered a total collapse last month, plunging it into darkness and leaving millions without power.
(Reporting by Antoni Slodkowski; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
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