Cuba's security council term ends
By Héctor Igarza
UNITED NATIONS — For both friends and foes, the Security Council will not be the same this year. Cuba completed its term as member of that body on December 31.
Evaluating its two years on the Security Council, UN Ambassador Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada says that he has received personal messages from other Security Council representatives expressing the respect of those who disagreed as well as those who agreed with Cuba for the principled positions it defended there.
Alarcón said that delegates were impressed by the fact that Cuba never looked around before voting to see how many hands were raised and on several occasions defended its positions alone.
Cuba joined the council at the time when the Gulf crisis began in August 1990 and continued with the preparation and outbreak of the war.
"It was not simply a war carried out by the United States against Iraq but rather by a coalition, outside the framework of the Security Council, with US generals heading troops from 29 allied nations", Alarcón said.
He added that these were two years that shook the world, with the collapse of the socialist governments in Eastern Europe, the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the growing impoverishment of Third World countries.
He went on to say that in these two years US President Bush has become emboldened and now feels he can carry out an intervention anywhere in the world with impunity. Bush is trying to starve out the Cuban people by stepping up the economic blockade, pressuring third countries not to trade with Cuba, as well as continuing military exercises aimed at intimidation.
Despite all this, up until the last day on the Security Council, Cuba's positions of principle remained unaltered.
"There could be no greater source of pride for us than the fact that the last two topics dealt with on December 31 were the independence of the Western Saharan people and the culmination of the struggle of the Salvadoran people, led by the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front", he said with a smile.
At the end of the year it is customary to receive cards from other diplomatic missions and colleagues.
"I sent all my colleagues and friends what seemed to me the most appropriate card. It is a simple card inscribed with a verse written by Eugenio María de Hostos more than a century ago."
It goes like this: " ... because Cuba cannot succumb. Because Cuba, aided or alone, will overcome ... Oh Cuba, mother of the redemptive ideas of the Americas."
[Abridged from Granma International.]