Havana says Washington is threatening countries with retaliation if they refuse to vote against condemning its embargo. Published October 21, 2026 October 21, 2026 Cuba has accused the United States of threatening countries with tariffs, visa restrictions and other retaliatory measures in an effort to get them to change their votes on an upcoming United Nations resolution calling for an end to the long-standing embargo against the island. Each year, a majority in the UN General Assembly votes in favor of a non-binding resolution that seeks to end the US embargo, which began in the early 1960s. List of 3-item recommended storiesend list The embargo, considered the longest in modern history, is credited with exacerbating economic difficulties on the island. But on Wednesday, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration was seeking to pressure members of the U.N. General Assembly to vote against the resolution this year. He explained that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Washington’s ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz were personally leading the campaign, which he said had been going on for months. “It is a new and dangerous way of conducting multilateral diplomacy,” Rodríguez wrote in a statement on the social media platform Rodriguez said U.S. officials had threatened to suspend cooperation programs, deny visas to government officials and their families, and even back opposition parties in upcoming elections if countries refused to change their positions. He also accused the United States of urging some countries to abstain or skip the vote altogether if they were not willing to vote against Cuba. Al Jazeera contacted the US State Department and the US Mission to the UN for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication. On Monday, Waltz accused Cuban diplomats of harassing and intimidating participants in a U.S.-hosted panel on alleged human rights abuses in Cuba. Cuba’s ambassador to the UN, Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, and other representatives had confronted Waltz as he was leaving the event at UN headquarters in New York City. Speaking to reporters later, Waltz said that each year, the Cuban government “propagates a lie through its annual resolution.” excuse after excuse to justify their oppression, to justify the misery of the Cuban people, and what we are doing here at the U.S. Mission to the UN is exposing those lies,” he said. In a separate briefing that day, Waltz also acknowledged that Washington had been pressuring European countries to reconsider their support for the resolution. He noted Ukraine’s accusations that Cuban citizens fighting for Russia were not paid and that the money was going to the Cuban government. “Yes, we have asked many of our European colleagues: given this evidence from the Ukrainian government, how can you continue to vote in favor of this resolution that is a propaganda tool for the Cuban regime and that is directly affecting its national security?” “The UN General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly in favor of resolutions calling for an end to the US economic embargo on Cuba almost every year since 1992. The embargo itself has been in effect for more than six decades. Since early 2026, the Trump administration has stepped up pressure on Cuba by blocking oil supplies and threatening tariffs on countries that supply fuel to the country, leaving Cubans facing more severe shortages of essential supplies and prolonged blackouts.
