Brazil's president calls U.S. economic embargo on Cuba 'illegal,' condemns terrorist list label

Reuters
Sat, September 16, 2023 at 2:37 PM CDT·2 min read

BRASILIA (Reuters) - On his first trip to Cuba during his third term in office, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called the embargo imposed by the United States on the island "illegal" and denounced the island's inclusion on the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump included the island nation on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, and though the Biden administration has reversed other Trump-era measures, it has so far not removed Cuba from the list.

"Cuba has been an advocate of fairer global governance. And to this day it is the victim of an illegal economic embargo," Lula said in a speech opening the G77 Summit of developing nations in the capital, Havana. "Brazil is against any unilateral coercive measure. We reject Cuba's inclusion on the list of states sponsoring terrorism."

The comments were made just hours before Lula left for New York, where he will attend the United Nations General Assembly and have bilateral talks with Biden.

Earlier, Cuba expressed concerns over the label and Washington’s decades-old Cold War-era economic embargo against the island governed by the Communist Party of Cuba. The 27-member European Union, the country's top trade partner, has also repeatedly rejected trade embargo. Cuba and critics of the economic sanctions say the embargo prevents and hampers access to food, medicine and other critical development supplies.

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