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[ cerca in archivio ] ARCHIVIO STORICO RADICALE
Archivio interventi PE
Newens Arthur Stanley - 29 settembre 1994
MEP*MPE - Newens (PSE).

Mr President, for 33 years Cuba has been subjected to a blockade by the United States, recently toughened up by the Torricelli Act in defiance of United Nations' resolutions in 1992 and 1993. This blockade - above all since the downfall of communism in Eastern Europe, which inflicted great damage on Cuba's overseas' trade - has caused acute shortages and severe hardship for the population, leading many citizens to seek a more affluent standard of living by crossing to the United States in flimsy and dangerous craft. Far from encouraging freer conditions and nurturing desirable reforms, this has greatly heightened tension. Even the United States has been forced to negotiate an agreement to prevent the results of the blockade reaching its own shores.

United States' administrators have treated Cuban emigrants in a way that they would have condemned had the Cuban authorities acted in this fashion.

We in the European Parliament surely do not wish to support the blockade if it gives rise to the danger of hostilities. We surely do not want the positive achievements of one of the lowest levels of infant mortality and illiteracy, and the highest expectation of life in any developing country, to be destroyed. We do not call for an embargo against Indonesia, which has an appalling record of human rights - especially in East Timor; we do not call for an embargo against Saudi Arabia, which has no free elections. We must in these circumstances clearly oppose the embargo against Cuba, as we have done in this Parliament in the past.

I am surprised that the PPE Group and others, which have stood out for their own motion for a resolution, do not actually do this. I hope that all Christian Democrats and Liberals will read their own motion very carefully before they vote for it, and that they will consider very carefully indeed what the situation should be. For my part, I hope that the motion supported by the Socialist Group will win the majority support in this House today.

(Applause)

 
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