The Heads of Government of CARICOM member States considered the actions of Washington to be “unjustified application of extraterritorial laws and measures contrary to international law”.
The member countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) condemned the United States’ anti-Cuba measures, in particular the trade and economic embargo and the imposition of new sanctions against the island. This was reported in the Granma newspaper on Thursday.
It is noted that the heads of government of the member states of the association at a regular meeting in Barbados considered such steps of the U.S. authorities as “unjustified application of extraterritorial laws and measures contrary to international law. CARICOM members also expressed concern about the obstruction of Cuban medical programmes in several countries.
In addition to economic cooperation, the development of joint measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus was on the agenda of the meeting.
The members of the Caribbean Community, founded in 1973, are Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago and Montserrat (British crownership).
The United States severed diplomatic ties with Cuba in 1961 in response to the nationalization of American property on the island. Subsequently, Washington announced an economic and trade embargo against that country. In December 2014, then United States President Barack Obama admitted that Washington’s previous policy towards Havana was not working and announced a movement towards normalizing bilateral relations and easing sanctions against Cuba. However, the rapprochement between the two countries stopped after Donald Trump became President of the United States in January 2017, who tightened the rules of travel to the country for his citizens and imposed a ban on doing business with organizations controlled by the Cuban military.