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Cuba wants WTO to rule on legality of U.S. embargo(EFE Ingles Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Geneva, Jan 22 (EFE).- A Cuban diplomat said here Monday that the World Trade Organization should "take a position on the legality of the embargo laws and measures" that the United States has maintained against the communist-ruled island for more than four decades. Jorge Ferrer made the request during the informal meeting of the WTO's group on non-agricultural market access, or NAMA. "Cuba believes that this is the appropriate forum to take a position on the legality of the laws and measures of the United States' embargo against Cuba, since they violate the rights of full members of this organization and of third countries," he said. Ferrer recalled that NAMA deals with the elimination of non-tariff barriers and that his country already presented in 2006 a document on the non-tariff obstacles erected by the United States that "impede and prohibit Cuban trade." In that document, he said, "the incompatibility of the laws and measures of the embargo against Cuba with the principles and regulations that govern WTO accords are clearly shown." He added that U.S. legislation imposing the embargo against Cuba implies a "vicious persecution of any trading company or institution or foreign bank that establishes or seeks to establish economic, commercial or financial relations with Cuban institutions." Ferrer said that in 2004 a total of 77 companies, banking institutions and non-governmental organizations in various parts of the world were fined by Washington for actions considered in violation of the regulations of the embargo. He added that of these organizations, 11 are foreign companies or subsidiaries of U.S. companies based in third countries. Another seven, the diplomat said, including Iberia, Alitalia and Air Jamaica airlines, South Korean conglomerate Daewoo and the Bank of China, were fined under allegations that their affiliates in the United States violated certain stipulations of the embargo against Cuba. He also said that since 2004 "the U.S. government has continued to ban the European laboratory Intervet in Holland from selling Cuba vaccines for the prevention of poultry diseases, alleging that they contain 10 percent or more of antigens produced" in U.S. territory. He also said that the 2005 Cuban program designed to manufacture or import 3 million pressure cookers and an equal number of electric rice cookers for distribution, one to each household on the island at subsidized prices, failed thanks to "the blockade and pressures" from Washington. The Cuban representative said that "from the regulatory standpoint of the WTO, the U.S. embargo against Cuba cannot be justified." EFE emm/cd Copyright 2007 EFE News Services (U.S.) Inc. |