"An Island on a Continent"

United Nations, September 20.- (Agencies) «Despite Washington’s hostility, we will continue to build bridges with the people of the United States, as we do with everyone in the world and we will increasingly strengthen ties with Cuban emigrants in any country corner of the planet,» emphasized the president of the Caribbean island, Miguel Díaz-Canel.

In his speech this Wednesday at the high-level segment of the UN General Assembly (UNGA78), Díaz-Canel affirmed that the siege against Cuba is an extraterritorial, cruel and silent economic war that is accompanied by a powerful political machinery of destabilization.

He pointed out that his people resist and creatively win in the face of this ruthless economic war, which since 2019, in the midst of a pandemic, opportunistically escalated to an even more extreme dimension.

Among other effects, the president recalled that this policy pursues and tries to cut off supplies of fuel and lubricants to Havana while prohibiting access to technologies, including medical equipment, with more than 10 percent North American components.

At the same time – he denounced – he attacks the island’s medical cooperation in other nations with threats to sovereign governments for requesting that contribution and responding to the public health needs of their populations.

«Covered by this arbitrary and fraudulent accusation, they extort hundreds of banking and financial entities in all parts of the world and force them to choose between continuing their relations with the United States or maintaining their ties with Cuba,» argued the president of the largest The Antilles.

Washington lies and does enormous damage to international efforts to combat terrorism when it accuses the Caribbean nation, without any basis, of sponsoring this scourge, he added.

It is, he said, a real siege accompanied by a powerful political destabilization machinery, with million-dollar funds approved by the United States Congress, to capitalize on the shortcomings caused by the blockade and undermine the constitutional order and citizen tranquility.

The largest of the Antilles is not the first country to be affected by its effects, but it is the one that has endured them for the longest time despite the global condemnation that is expressed almost unanimously every year in this Assembly, he stressed.