Central Europe Online.
March 8, 2001.
WASHINGTON, Mar 8, 2001 -- (CTK - Czech News Agency) U.S. Secretary of State
Colin Powell said on Wednesday night that the Czech-proposed additions to the
planned resolution on human rights violations in Cuba, which speaks against U.S.
economic sanctions applied towards Cuba was a problem.
Powell said that the USA would definitely be pushing through criticism of
Cuba's failure to respect human rights at the annual meeting of the UN Human
Rights Commission which starts in Geneva on March 19. "We are having
difficulty with the actual resolution at this point because of the
anti-sanctions additions that have been placed on it," Powell said at the
House of Representatives International Relations Committee. "It's going to
be a very, very tough fight," Powell said.
Cuban President Fidel Castro has launched an extensive diplomatic as well as
public relations campaign to prevent the approval of the resolution criticizing
human rights violation in his country which in the past years was co-authored by
the Czech Republic and Poland. This year the resolution will only be submitted
by the Czech Republic which had failed to reach agreement with Polish colleagues
on the addition saying that across-the-board economic sanctions are
counterproductive.
Last year the "anti-Cuban resolution" was also to contain a
passage saying that the economic sanctions do not help bring about a change in
Cuba's regime, but it was eventually deleted from the text, according to the
Czech Foreign Ministry. While tactics took the upper hand over backbone in the
previous years "we want backbone to take the upper hand over tactics"
this year, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ales Pospisil said on Wednesday. The
passage which criticizes the sanctions was included in the draft resolution
already before the detention and subsequent release of two Czech citizens,
Freedom Union deputy Ivan Pilip and ex-student leader Jan Bubenik after they met
Cuban citizens in Cuba in January, Pospisil said, thus indicating that the
clause was no deal with Cuba.
((c) 2001 CTK - Czech News Agency)
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