For the first time in a quarter century, the United States plans to abstain Wednesday in the annual United Nations vote condemning the U.S. policy toward Cuba, Obama administration officials said.
Each year, the U.N. General Assembly votes overwhelmingly to urge the United States to end its economic embargo of the island. In 2015, the vote was 191-2, with only Israel joining in a vote against the measure.
Last year, following its re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba, the Obama administration said it was prepared, for the first time, to abstain in the vote, provided Cuba agreed to minor alteration in the wording of the resolution. It argued that President Barack Obama had used his executive authority to soften many of the restrictions, but that only Congress could fully repeal the embargo, first adopted in 1962 and strengthened in 1992 and 1996.
Cuba refused, saying that as long as the embargo remained U.S. law, there was no point in softening the wording of condemnation.
Obama has repeatedly called on lawmakers to lift the sanctions. But while a number of bills have been introduced to do that, and public opinion polls indicate the American public favors removal of the embargo, Congress has not acted. Some members have objected that, despite increasing normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations, the island’s government continues to violate the human rights of its citizens with political arrests and other restrictions.
The General Assembly vote is not legally binding. But since it was first voted on in 1992, it has provided an annual opportunity for other countries to publicly criticize U.S. policy. It describes the embargo as a violation of various international laws and principles and calls on “all states” to refrain from unilateral interference with the internal affairs and trade freedoms of other nations.
It has never garnered more than three votes in opposition – the United States, Israel, and the occasional Eastern European or Pacific island nation.
Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is expected to speak at Wednesday’s General Assembly session to explain the U.S. abstention decision.
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