BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
UNITED NATIONS - "As we speak today, blood is being shed as a result of the assault by Israel against the Palestinian people. I denounce the criminal Israeli aggression and stand on the side of our fraternal Palestinian people who are fighting for an independent Palestinian state." This is what Cuban foreign minister Roberto Robaina said at the beginning of his talk to the UN General Assembly September 30. Robaina was addressing the 51st session of the Assembly.

The Cuban leader also condemned Washington for its recent military strikes against Iraq. "What political, legal or moral reason makes it legitimate to carry out an attack with missiles against the Republic of Iraq as the U.S. Armed Forces did just a few days ago?" he asked.

"There is no justification to trample upon the territorial integrity of a member of this organization," Robaina stated. He said the motivation for this action by the White House was either "the mean interests in oil or the frenzy of the ongoing carnival-type electoral process in the United States."

Robaina said that the embargo-tightening legislation U.S. president William Clinton enacted in March has caused concern among many governments for its extraterritorial reach. "The Helms-Burton Act, the most sophisticated concoction of the economic war against Cuba, attacks many countries and compels them to feel in their own sovereignty what the Cubans have been facing for a long time."

The legislation provides for sanctions against foreign companies that have invested in Cuban property confiscated by workers and peasants from U.S. nationals after the 1959 revolution in that country.

The Cuban diplomat said a second bill signed by Clinton recently, which calls for U.S. sanctions against foreign companies that invest in Iran and Libya, is "another instance of unipolarity and of the attempt to dictate the conduct of sovereign states." This measure was sponsored by Republican Senator Alfonse D'Amato and Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy.

"The argument is the alleged war against terrorism," Robaina said, "when in fact the United States is the main promoter of terrorism in its dirty wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Angola, South Africa, against the Palestinian patriots; when the United States always supported the bloodiest regimes that have ever existed in this world."

He assailed Washington's action to "decertify" Colombia for supposedly not combating drug trafficking vigorously enough - denying financial aid and loans to its government. "The country, which by its enormous consumption has become the main market and promoter of this criminal industry and where the greatest profits of this business are generated, does not have the moral authority to assign or demand responsibility from others," Robaina said.

Events in world politics today show that on the eve of the 21st century "what we see everywhere is not a new order, but a perfect and troublesome world disorder." He said that the "neoliberal" policies of privatization, cutbacks of social programs, and other measures of capitalist austerity and imperialist domination are at the root of the problem.

In this world, and despite a vicious economic war by Washington, the Cuban people have been able to reverse the country's economic decline and begin a recovery.

"The socialism we chose for our homeland is the only emancipating, moral, and ethical alternative," Robaina concluded. "It is a path that we selected freely, sovereignly, independently; a path that we will not renounce and that nobody imposed on us."  
 
 
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