Latin Refusal to Condemn Cuba on Rights Angers U.S., Officials Say

Reagan Administration officials are outraged at the refusal of five Latin American countries to go along with a U.S. effort in the United Nations to protest alleged human right abuses in Cuba, officials said Saturday.

The U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva voted 19 to 18 on Wednesday, with six abstentions, for a motion by the Indian delegation to take no action on the U.S. proposal.

Subsequently, Elliott Abrams, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, met here with the ambassadors of Argentina, Peru, Venezuela and Colombia to register his objections to their anti-U.S. votes. Abrams will deliver the same message to the ambassador from Mexico this week.

A U.S. official, summing up the substance of Abrams’ comments to the envoys, said that the United States “finds it incredible that these countries were even unwilling to go along with an abstention on the resolution” rather than voting against the United States.

Brazil’s Abstention

The U.S. position generally was supported by the European democracies and African countries. Costa Rica voted with the United States, while Brazil abstained.

The official, asking not to be identified, said the United States seldom seeks diplomatic favors from friendly countries of this hemisphere.

“We don’t ask for big things. We ask for little things,” the official said. “We don’t understand how they, as democracies, can side with the Soviet Union and Cuba on this issue.”

The official noted that there was a consensus in the commission on an earlier resolution to monitor the human rights situation in Chile. Another official said that in voting against Chile and for Cuba, the Latin democracies were guilty of using a double standard.

The proposed U.S. resolution called attention to what it said was the large number of political prisoners in Cuba and expressed “deep concern” over limitations on freedom of speech and association, among others.

Argentina’s Vote

The officials expressed dismay over the vote of Argentina, which recently received a $225-million U.S. bridge loan to help give the country a financial respite as it was renegotiating its debt service schedule with commercial banks.

Much of the official resentment was directed at Venezuela. Officials said Venezuela cast its vote as the American ambassador to Caracas, Otto J. Reich, was arriving in Washington to lobby the Congress against proposals to impose a tax on imported oil. As a major oil exporter to the United States, Venezuela strongly opposes any such tax.