Cuba says the United States is pressuring countries with tariffs, visa restrictions and other retaliatory steps to get them to change their votes on an upcoming United Nations resolution. The measure calls for an end to the long-running US embargo against the island.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez made the claim on Wednesday. He said the administration of US President Donald Trump was trying to press members of the UN General Assembly to vote against the text this year, with the vote expected on October 27 or 28.
Rodriguez details alleged US pressure on UN members
Rodriguez said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Washington’s UN ambassador, Mike Waltz, were personally leading the campaign, which he alleged had been underway for months. In a statement posted on X, he called it “a new and dangerous way of conducting multilateral diplomacy.”
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According to Rodriguez, US officials had threatened to take the following steps if countries refused to shift their positions:
- suspend cooperation programmes
- deny visas to government officials and their families
- back opposition parties in upcoming elections
He also accused Washington of urging some countries to abstain or skip the vote altogether if they were unwilling to oppose Cuba. The claims come as tensions between the two countries rise ahead of the vote. The US State Department and the US Mission to the UN did not reply to requests for comment before publication.
Waltz accuses Cuban diplomats over UN panel confrontation
On Monday, Waltz accused Cuban diplomats of harassing and intimidating participants at a US-hosted panel on alleged human rights abuses in Cuba. He said Cuba’s UN Ambassador Ernesto Soberon Guzman and other representatives confronted him as he left the event at UN headquarters in New York City.
Speaking to reporters afterward, Waltz said the Cuban government “propagates a lie through its annual resolution.” He argued that Havana uses one excuse after another to justify its oppression and the misery of its people, and said the US Mission to the UN was exposing those claims.
Waltz links European votes to Ukraine evidence claims
In a separate briefing that day, Waltz acknowledged that Washington had lobbied European countries to reconsider their support for the resolution. He pointed to Ukrainian allegations that Cuban nationals fighting for Russia were not being paid, and that the money was instead going to the Cuban government.
Waltz asked how European colleagues could keep voting for a resolution he described as a propaganda tool for the Cuban regime, one that he said was directly affecting their national security, given the evidence from the Ukrainian government.
Decades-old embargo and fuel shortages weigh on Cuba
The UN General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly in favour of calls to end the US economic embargo almost every year since 1992. The embargo has been in place for more than six decades and has been credited with worsening economic hardship on the island.
The Trump administration has long maintained that the Cuban government, not the embargo, is to blame for the country’s struggling economy, and it has called for regime change.
Since the start of 2026, the administration has stepped up pressure by blocking oil supplies and threatening tariffs on countries that supply Cuba with fuel. Cubans have faced more severe shortages of essential supplies and prolonged blackouts as a result.
