Cuba: 'Major Victory' On OAS Vote, Declines To Rejoin

Source: Agence France-Presse

HAVANA - The Cuban government on Thursday declined to return to the Organization of American States (OAS), despite declaring the body's landmark decision to lift a 47-year ban on the island country to be a "major victory."

The OAS vote is "a major victory for Latin America and the Caribbean and also for the Cuban people," said Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly, in the communist government's initial reaction to the decision.

But, Alarcon said, the move "does not alter what Cuba thought yesterday, the day before yesterday and today."

Cuba — the Americas' only one-party communist regime, and a harsh OAS critic — has previously shown no interest in rejoining the organization, which it derided this week as a "pestilent corpse" in state media.

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro, in an article appearing in the state-run press before the vote, denounced the OAS as being complicit in "crimes" committed by the United States against the Caribbean island and the rest of Latin America.

Read more: http://www.windsorstar.com/Cuba+major+victory+vote+declines+rejoin/1662535/story.html

the US isn'pt the big old bad guy, it's Cuba's decfision not to join.

It's far better to develop ALBA, and develop other pan-American bodies that exclude the US. OAS is a relic of another era when the US dominated the continent totally. But it IS a victory that the OAS welcomes Cuba, against the wishes of the US. This is a good sign that Raul Castro won't be the one who sells Cuba out as "Cuba's Yeltsin."

The US has committed crimes in many LatAm and Caribbean nations, Cuba being a prime example.

Why the hell would any media source use quotes around "crimes" is beyond credibility.

I can name some of those crimes.

Sanction, sanction, sanction. Alienate. Ignore. Cut diplomatic ties, denounce, decry,...

Who says these countries even want it we we have to offer. They don't like us. They won't take what we got to start with. So much kicking Cuba out of the OAS did huh? It's like telling me that I'm not welcomed at the next RNC. I don't want to go anyway, it's not friggin' punishment!