THE UN General Assembly voted last night to condemn the US economic embargo against Cuba, adding pressure on the Obama administration to abandon the 47-year-old policy.

The majority of the assembly approved a resolution demanding an end to the embargo. The annual diplomatic ritual had extra resonance this year because of the slight thaw in Washington-Havana relations.

Last year, 185 UN members voted to end the embargo, with only Israel and Palau siding with the US. Micronesia and the Marshall Islands abstained.

The White House has made cautious overtures to Raul Castro’s government – such as easing travel restrictions for Cuban Americans – but has maintained crippling trade and financial controls first imposed by the Kennedy administration in 1962.

Mainstream US think tanks say US President Barack Obama’s reforms are timid and fail to reset a relationship that soured soon after Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries overthrew the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista 50 years ago.

“This is a start, but more, much more, needs to be done,” said Sarah Stephens, director of the Centre for Democracy in the Americas. “Not because the UN says so, but because our country needs to embrace the world not as we found it in 1959 – or in 2008 – but as it exists today.”

The embargo bans Cuban imports, greatly restricts US exports and deters foreign firms from doing business with the island, 145km (90 miles) off Florida.

As a senator, Mr Obama opposed the embargo but hardened his position when running for president, not least because he needed the votes of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Florida. In office, he has let Congress take the lead in easing restrictions while saying the embargo will remain until Havana releases political prisoners and improves human rights.

“The US realises that the embargo is an outmoded policy but Obama is not ready to do the hard work required to remove it entirely, which means that US policy will continue to consist of piecemeal changes,” said Dan Erikson, author of The Cuba Wars and an analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank.

Even US allies such as Britain, Australia and Colombia side against the superpower, saying its Cuba policy is a cold-war anachronism given US trade with undemocratic states such as China and Vietnam. One European ambassador called the embargo “demented”.

Havana will claim a propaganda windfall from yesterday’s vote. Rogelio Polanco, its ambassador to Venezuela, told a seminar in Caracas that international solidarity was needed to rein in a global bully.

“The US’s economic and military power, even if diminished, remains hegemonic,” he said.

Fidel Castro has long blamed the embargo for the island’s impoverishment but there has been greater official recognition of the shortcomings of socialist central planning since his brother Raul took over the presidency last year.

The infrastructure creaks, the average monthly wage hovers under $20 (€13.60), and there are chronic shortages of basic goods such as fruit, vegetables, meat, soap, shampoo and toilet paper. The island’s trade deficit rose to $11.4 billion last year.

www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/1029/1224257602237.html