By Marc Frank and Nelson Acosta
HAVANA (Reuters) -Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez on Wednesday called for the United Nations to stop the United States from starting a war in the region, amid rising tensions due to a military buildup in the Caribbean to counter drug cartels.
“I call on the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council to fulfill their obligations and to exercise their prerogatives under the mandate of the Charter to preserve peace in our region,” Rodriguez told a press conference in Havana to launch its annual campaign for a United Nations resolution condemning the trade embargo.
The foreign minister said fighting drug trafficking in the name of U.S. national security was a “crude and ridiculous pretext” for aggression.
“The United States is today the main financial center and the primary center for money laundering of foreign assets that originate from transnational organized crime, fundamentally drug trafficking,” he charged.
Tensions have been mounting between Washington and Venezuela, Cuba’s most important political and economic ally, after U.S. military strikes in the Caribbean on three boats out of Venezuela that it claimed were carrying drugs.
“The interception and destruction of boats, the extrajudicial killing of civilians, the interception of fishing vessels … create a dangerous situation that threatens peace and security,” Rodriguez said.
For the last 32 years the United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly passed a non-binding resolution calling on the United States to lift its comprehensive sanctions regime on Cuba.
Rodriguez said “what is new this year is an international context characterized by increasing unilateralism … and the strengthening of the U.S. aggressive policy against Cuba and against virtually every country on the planet.”
President Donald Trump has doubled down on sanctions since taking office in January, returning Cuba to a U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, tightening financial and travel restrictions and sanctioning third country nationals who host Cuban doctors.
Rodriguez blamed sanctions for the grueling crisis the country is mired in, the worst economic downturn in decades characterized by shortages of basic goods, collapsing infrastructure and runaway inflation.
The Trump administration blames Cuba’s Communist system.
(Reporting by Marc Frank; Additional reporting by Nelson Acosta; Editing by Alistair Bell)
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