At a meeting with journalists and guests in Paris, on the occasion of a new vote at the United Nations General Assembly against Washington’s hostile policy, the diplomat pointed out, in response to a question from Prensa Latina, that without the support received from countries, renowned figures, organizations and individuals, it would have been much more difficult to resist a blockade imposed for more than 60 years.

For example, when we faced the Covid-19 pandemic, we had our vaccines, but no syringes, and it was thanks to solidarity that we were able to protect 11 million people, he said at the event, which was attended by members of the diplomatic corps, representatives of French associations and Cuban residents.

Vaillant expressed confidence that this universal support against Washington’s economic, commercial and financial blockade will be felt once again at the UN General Assembly in New York, where two days of debates on a new draft resolution calling for an end to that coercive measure will begin on Wednesday.

For the thirty-first time since 1992, the United Nations’ main deliberative body, where all its 193 member States sit on an equal footing, will analyze and vote on a text on the necessity to end the blockade.

The United States lies when it says that its policy is against the Cuban Government, because it is really against an entire people, and you in France and around the world have represented a moral barrier against such lies, stressed the diplomat, who was accompanied by Cuba’s Ambassador at UNESCO Yahima Esquivel.

Vaillant insisted on his words of gratitude to all those who on French soil and in the world have made solidarity with Cuba an objective of their lives.

In his speech, which was followed by several questions, Vaillant denounced the genocidal nature and the extraterritorial scope of the blockade, and warned that it has been a policy implemented and intensified for decades by both Republican and Democratic administrations.

The US blockade is the main obstacle to our development, attacks all sectors of society and represents a flagrant and systematic violation of human rights, he said.

According to the ambassador, if the economic, commercial and financial cost is devastating, the human cost is incalculable, especially in such sensitive areas as health care and childhood.

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