CUBA: Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque says the UN vote to lift the embargo and the Democrats victory earlier this week are both positive signals

The Cuban government gloated on Thursday (November 8) about the latest United Nations vote to end a long-running U.S. trade embargo and was equally pleased by the heavy Republican losses in America's congressional elections. Both events, along with Tuesday's election of leftist Daniel Ortega as president of Nicaragua, were viewed as a major slap in the face for U.S. President George W. Bush. "183 against 1," blared a headline in the state-controlled newspaper Granma, referring to the 183 countries that voted for a U.N. resolution on Wednesday calling for the U.S. to drop the four-decades-old trade embargo against Cuba. The U.N. resolution has been passed each year for the past 15 years, but the United States is not bound by it and has ignored it. In fact, the Bush administration has tightened the embargo, which has earned the enmity of the Cuban government. Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, appearing on state-run television, called the U.N. vote a "tremendous victory" and said it showed the weakness of the U.S. government's "moral authority." "On a day like yesterday, at the UN, filled us all with pride and gives us hope in the conviction of how much prestige and support our fight has on an international scale," he said. In the U.S. election, Democrats won control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, which will make it difficult for Republican Bush to push through his political agenda in his remaining two years in office. "This victory by the Democrats signifies a powerful defeat for Bush and the group of ultra-conservatives in power with him," Perez Roque said. "It signifies that the American people are realizing how they have been lying to them." Perez Roque said Ortega's election win in Nicaragua was also a big loss for the Bush administration because it had worked to defeat him.

ITN Source | November 11, 2006

Tags:. .events. .wednesday. .major. .both. .voted