ISLAMABAD, Nov 1: Cuban ambassador to Pakistan Gustavo Machin Gomez on Wednesday made a passionate appeal to the international community to unanimously reject the 44-year-old US economic blockade against his country that negates the UN Charter and the principles of international law.

The call comes a week ahead of the draft resolution that Cuba will submit to the 192-member UN General Assembly for the 15th consecutive year seeking an end to the embargo.

“The blockade is a systematic, flagrant and mass violation of human rights of the Cuban people, particularly the rights to health and food, thus causing serious humanitarian consequences,” the Cuban ambassador told a press conference here.

He said the US blockade that classified as a genocide action, in virtue of item (c) article II of Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and an act of economic war, had caused direct damages to the Cuban economy to the tune of over $86.108 billion. “In 2005 alone it cost us more than $4 billion,” he added.

Ambassador Gomez pointed out that the number of UN member states voting against the US embargo policy had successively been increasing and last year the maximum number of countries voted in favour of the Cuban resolution. “Last year, 182, member states voted in favour, as a demonstration of the almost unanimous rejection by the international community to the US government’s genocide policy against Cuba and application of extraterritorial laws as the so called Helms Burton Act,” he said lashing out at the ruthless US policies.—Q.A.