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Havana (AFP) – The Government of Cuba asked US President Joe Biden on Wednesday to go further and lift the US sanctions against the island that are attributable to the president, after Washington announced an emergency aid of two million dollars for the island. for Hurricane Ian.
The United States “would have a moral duty” to apply exemptions to Cuba in the same way that it did with other countries during the pandemic and in the face of natural disasters, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said when presenting the report on the impact of the US embargo against the island.
In that sense, he added that “it could take measures to lift or relax the blockade in dozens of areas using executive powers.”
“It is what morality, it is what decency and it is even what the national interest with politics and international law would demand,” Rodríguez said.
The foreign minister thanked the “critical humanitarian aid” announced Tuesday by Washington through the United States Agency for International Development, after the Hurricane Ian At the end of September, it left two dead and considerable material losses in the western provinces of the island.
The head of diplomacy also said that after the fire in August at a fuel storage plant in the province of Matanzas that destroyed four megatanks of crude oil, the United States offered two virtual technical advisories and 100 uniforms for firefighters, of which only 43 have arrived.
Aid of a “humanitarian nature”
In addition to 17 deaths, the Matanzas fire caused material losses, including 100 million dollars just from the fuel burned, Rodríguez explained.
The aid from Washington for Ian and the fire is not “measured by its economic magnitude but by being an act of a humanitarian nature that we appreciate,” the foreign minister added.
Cuba is going through its worst economic crisis in three decades with shortages of food, medicine and fuel, while facing daily blackouts due to the obsolete technology of its thermoelectric plants.
This situation has been aggravated since former US President Donald Trump tightened the embargo imposed on Cuba since 1962 as of 2018, as well as due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
When he arrived at the White House in January 2021, Biden promised to review the policy towards Cuba, but he toughened the speech after the outcome of the massive anti-government protests in July 2021.
The US embargo, tightened on several occasions, has not been able to topple the government of the Cuban Communist Party, despite the context “of economic suffocation, of economic warfare of deliberately seeking the collapse of the Cuban economy,” Rodríguez said.
At the beginning of November, Cuba will again submit to a vote for the thirtieth time before the United Nations General Assembly, a resolution that calls for an end to the US embargo.
According to the foreign minister, between August 2021 and February 2022, these sanctions have cost Cuba 3,806 million dollars, “a historical record for this short period”, which would have allowed the Cuban economy to grow by 4.5%. .
Since President John F. Kennedy imposed the embargo in the midst of the Cold War, less than a year after Fidel Castro declared the socialist nature of the revolution, it has caused damages to the island of 154,217 million dollars at current prices, he assured. the person in charge of Cuban foreign policy.
