UN votes to condemn embargo of Cuba despite US lobbying push

US points to increase in abstentions in General Assembly as evidence that push to isolate Cuba is slowly succeeding.

The United Nations General Assembly has again voted in favour of a resolution condemning the United States’s economic embargo of Cuba despite a push by US officials to peel off support.

The resolution passed on Wednesday with 130 countries in favour and 17 opposed, including the US and Israel. Another 25 countries abstained, including countries such as Germany and Italy, that had previously voted in favour. The General Assembly has voted to condemn the embargo annually for more than three decades.

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Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said in a social media post after the vote that the US was “once again isolated in its attempt to continue strangling the Cuban people”.

“Neither its most insane pretexts nor its pressures nor media circus will prevail over the force of facts and truth,” he added.

The US embargo on Cuba, part of an effort to isolate the country and squeeze its economy that has lasted more than six decades, has been widely condemned on the world stage and linked to worsening hardship on the island.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has implemented a series of additional economic restrictions, including an energy blockade, to further tighten the screws.

That economic campaign has also been accompanied by a US diplomatic push to further isolate Havana, an effort that US officials said is apparent in the uptick in countries that abstained during Wednesday’s vote. Cuban officials accused the US of threatening countries with tariffs, visa restrictions and other penalties if they voted to condemn the embargo.

“I’m satisfied that so many countries now, including major economies like Korea, like Germany and others have shifted their position,” US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz told reporters after the vote.

“Diplomacy takes time, but now that we’ve had a tripling of countries that have shifted, we expect that to only continue to grow,” he added.

Tensions between US and Cuban officials exploded on Tuesday during a General Assembly debate with both yelling at the other and engaging in an apparent shoving match.

Waltz said on Wednesday that Richard Tur de la Concepcion, a first secretary at Cuba’s UN mission, would be expelled from the country for “assaulting an American diplomat”.

Al Jazeera has reached out to the US and Cuban missions for comment but has not received a response.