Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez affirms that Cuba is a nation of peace
Cuba is a nation of peace, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez affirmed on behalf of his people and government at the High-Level Segment of the 80th Session of the UN General Assembly.
“Despite all the harm that the United States has caused and continues to cause, we have always been willing to engage in dialogue without conditions and to try to advance toward a respectful and civilized relationship with that country, without subordination or limits on our sovereign prerogatives,” he emphasized.
The Cuban foreign minister, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and a member of the Cuban Parliament, explained to the plenary that the blockade against his country persists and is becoming extremely strict.
“This is a truly comprehensive and prolonged economic war, aimed at depriving Cubans of their livelihoods and sustainability, of their existence as a supportive, cultured, and joyful people,” the top Cuban diplomat added.
Anyone who claims otherwise is deliberately lying,” he emphasized. “The very promoters of this war boast of its destructive effect and its ability to strike at the living standards of an entire people from any corner of the planet,” the foreign minister argued.
He stated that the aggression has escalated to unprecedented levels in the last eight years, including actions of persecution and economic pressure on third parties, the states you represent, and that they are increasingly elaborate, surgical, and extraterritorial.
“It causes multiple and extraordinary impediments to productive, commercial, and financial activity, and to the services and policies that guarantee social justice and life itself,” he added.
Bruno Rodriguez mentioned that Cuba faces a serious situation of prolonged and daily power outages, difficulties in affording food, insufficient availability of medicines, depressed public transportation, limitations on community services, and steep inflation that depresses real incomes.
Cuba’s foreign minister also pointed out that “it is cynical that the United States government, for purposes of political and economic coercion, labels Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism, a slander that this Organization, nor any other of its Member States, does not shares.” He recalled that the island has been a victim of this scourge.
At another point in his speech, Rodríguez stated that “80 years ago, the UN was founded with just 51 Member States. Today we are 193.”
“The most urgent priority is to create a new international order that guarantees peace, the right to development, sovereign equality, and the participation and representation of developing countries in global policy decisions,” he noted.
An order, he emphasized, “that provides for the common good and prosperity in harmony with nature, and ensures the exercise of all human rights for all people.”
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez called for a new civilized coexistence, in which solidarity, international cooperation, and the peaceful settlement of disputes prevail as alternatives to war, the use of force, aggression and occupation.
“A new coexistence opposed to the aspirations of unipolar domination and hegemony. An order without blockades or unilateral coercive measures, based on multilateralism and with full respect for the United Nations Charter and international law.”
In his remarks, the Cuban foreign minister also addressed the dangers of the climate crisis, which “is destroying nations and lives, devastating communities and economies,” and spoke of the external debt of developing countries, “paid several times over, growing and accumulating astronomical figures.”
He also expressed unequivocal support for Palestine. “While we deliberate here, 2.2 million human beings in Gaza are condemned to hunger due to the acts of genocide, extermination, and ethnic cleansing of the Zionist regime, which relies on military and financial supplies and the impunity guaranteed by the United States government,” he said.
In this regard, he reiterated “the firmest solidarity with the Palestinian people and their just cause for freedom, independence, and an end to the Zionist occupation.”
Rodríguez, the tenth speaker in the morning session of Saturday, urged the General Assembly to promote concrete measures without delay if the Security Council proves impotent due to the veto that the United States exercises or threatens to exercise, and is unable to adopt effective measures to stop the barbarity.
“At the very least, it must unequivocally declare Palestine’s right to be a member state of the UN, within its pre-1967 borders, its capital in East Jerusalem, and the right of return for refugees.”
Furthermore, in response to the United States military deployment in the Caribbean, the foreign minister reaffirmed his “strong rejection of the threats of aggression against Venezuela.”
“Our full support for the Bolivarian and Chavista government of that sister Latin American and Caribbean nation and for the Popular Military Union led by the legitimate President Nicolás Maduro Moros,” he added.
Bruno Rodríguez repudiated the Monroe Doctrine and any attempt at militarization, intervention, or imperialist domination in Latin America and the Caribbean, which was proclaimed as a Zone of Peace in January 2014 in Havana.
[ SOURCE: PRENSA LATINA ]
