U.N. Rebuffs U.S. on Cuba Embargo : Trade: Allies desert Washington in 59-3 General Assembly vote that urges lifting of latest restrictions. American interference in foreign subsidiaries is alleged.

The United States found itself embarrassed and deserted by its allies Tuesday as the General Assembly voted by a wide margin to demand the lifting of the latest American economic embargo against Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

The vote in favor of the Cuban resolution was 59 to 3, with 71 abstentions. Only Israel and Romania supported the United States. America’s NATO allies such as Canada, France and Spain voted with Cuba. Such staunch friends as Britain, Germany and Belgium would do no more than abstain. Even Russia, so needful of American aid, only abstained.

Resolutions of the General Assembly, unlike those of the Security Council, are not binding in international law. But the vote amounted to a stinging rebuke for a country that has dominated the United Nations since the end of the Cold War.

Friends joined enemies in supporting Cuba because of their anger over the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, which expands the total American embargo on trade with Cuba to foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies.

The law, passed by Congress and signed by President Bush in October, also prohibits all ships, whether foreign or not, from visiting American ports within six months of docking in Cuba.

The law was seen by many governments as an attempt by a foreign power to regulate their domestic companies. Though controlled by American capital, these companies are regarded, legally, as just like all others, operating under the same regulations.

The United States has maintained an embargo of one kind or another against trade with Cuba for more than three decades. But Tuesday’s vote was the first time that the Castro government has ever won support in the United Nations for a resolution denouncing the embargo.

Cuba tried to introduce a similar resolution a year ago. But many governments--under American pressure--persuaded Cuba to withdraw it then. Passage of the Cuban Democracy Act in the intervening months made such pressure useless this time.

American officials had realized earlier in the week that trying to head off the Cuban resolution was hopeless.

But Ambassador Alexander Watson, deputy chief of the U.S. Mission, tried anyway to convince the General Assembly that the Cubans were using the Cuban Democracy Act as a pretext to involve the United Nations in the bilateral relations between the United States and Castro.

“The United States chooses not to trade with Cuba for good reasons,” Watson said. “The government of Cuba, in violation of international law, expropriated billions of dollars worth of private property belonging to U.S. individuals and has refused to make reasonable restitution.”

The American diplomat was referring to Castro’s seizure of American business assets soon after coming to power in 1959.

Watson said the embargo is “not a blockade” and therefore was “a legitimate response to the unreasonable and illegal behavior of the Cuban government.”

Governments upset with the Cuban Democracy Act, Watson insisted, should communicate their concerns directly to the American government and not use the United Nations. He said the American embargo against Cuba is a bilateral issue between the two countries and not an issue for an international forum.

But Cuban Ambassador Alcibiades Hidalgo Basulto told the General Assembly that the American embargo was an attempt “to impose upon the Cuban people a political, social and economic system to the liking of the United States.”

Hidalgo said that the embargo, which he called a blockade, has seriously damaged the Cuban economy in the last 30 years and therefore violates “the most universal norms of international law, not to mention basic considerations of morality.”

Despite its harm to the Cuban economy, Hidalgo went on, “the immoral, illegal and inhuman U.S. policy has not and will not bend Cuba’s will.”

Ambassador Thomas L. Richardson of Britain, speaking on behalf of the European nations that abstained, said that, while Europe wants to encourage Cuba’s transition to democracy, the American law is “a violation of a general principle of international law and the sovereignty of independent nations.”

Canadian delegate David N. Malone told the General Assembly that Canada’s support for the Cuban resolution should not be taken as a sign of Canadian complacency about Cuba’s human rights record or an indication that Canada wants to interfere in the bilateral relations between the United States and Cuba.

The Cuban resolution was made more palatable to American allies because it did not mention the United States by name. Instead, the resolution called on all nations to repeal all laws “whose extraterritorial effects affect the sovereignty of other states and the legitimate interests of entities or persons under their jurisdiction, and the freedom of trade and navigation.”

The lineup on the vote seemed almost bizarre for a U.N. resolution.

Those supporting the resolution included Communist countries such as Vietnam and North Korea. They were joined by North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies, like France and Canada. Further support for the measure came from the United States’ Latin American friends like Venezuela and Brazil. Third World governments, like Nigeria and Kenya, and American enemies, like Iraq, also backed the resolution.

The nations abstaining included Western European governments, like Britain and Italy; former members of the Soviet Union, like Russia and Armenia, and Third World countries, like Zaire and Rwanda.

Some American friends, like Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Botswana, avoided the delicate issue by joining the 42 governments that failed to even show up for the assembly debate.