Ibero-Am Coordinators Slam US Blockade of Cuba

Mar del Plata, Argentina, Dec 2. -The National Cooperation Coordinators of the Ibero-American countries rejected on Thursday the U.S. economic blockade against Cuba, demanding that Washington lift it.

That statement was issued during a special declaration to be ratified by heads of state and government as an official agreement of the 20th Ibero-American Summit, taking place in this beach resort.

The document termed unacceptable the application of coercive unilateral measures that harm the welfare of the people and their access to and full enjoyment of international cooperation benefits.

The text also refers to obstacles caused by the blockade to the materialization of the slogan of the summit: education for social inclusion, and to how it impedes the integration processes.

The statement reaffirms the energetic rejection of unilateral measures, such as the Helms-Burton Act, and exhorts the United States to eliminate them, in compliance with successive UN General Assembly resolutions calling for an end to the economic, trade and financial blockade on Cuba.

Its approval follows other measures adopted in Ibero-American summits held in Salamanca, Montevideo, Santiago de Chile, San Salvador, and Estoril, all of them condemning punitive measures different US administrations have maintained for almost 50 years.

The Cooperation Coordinators also approved a Cuban proposal for reinforcing that Ibero-American policy against terrorism, and focused on the need to adopt decisions against the impunity of the perpetrators.

Th document reaffirms the duty of the States to find, capture and deny safe haven to terrorists, and to bring them to trial, listing cases such as Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, sheltered in the United States, and guilty of the mid-air explosion of a Cuban aircraft in 1976. (Prensa Latina)