The UN Announcement
Right before Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez closed the first round of high-level diplomats speaking in favor of the annual United Nations General Assembly Resolution on the “necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba,” the Obama Administration’s top diplomat at the UN, Samantha Power, took the podium to deliver an announcement. “For more than 50 years,” Power stated, “the United States had a policy aimed at isolating the government of Cuba. For roughly half of those years, UN member states have voted overwhelmingly for a General Assembly resolution that condemns the U.S. embargo and calls for it to be ended. The United States has always voted against this resolution. Today the United States will abstain.” The audience of diplomats, as well as guests in the visitors balcony broke into prolonged applause.
The 2015 vote had been 192-2 with only Israel voting in solidarity with the US. This year the Israeli UN Ambassador delivered a terse sentence – “Israel welcomes the progress in relations between the United States and Cuba and hopes this progress will lead to a new era in the region.” When the giant electric scoreboard listed the tally, Israel’s vote to also abstain was registered. So that was that, the vote was now unanimous.
On July 20, 2015 Washington and Havana restored diplomatic relations after the US State Department had removed…