US bars Cuba from UN conference

[Judi Lynn]

US bars Cuba from UN conference
Web posted at: 9/13/2005 2:52:21
Source ::: Reuters
UNITED NATIONS: Cuba complained to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan yesterday that the US had barred its national assembly speaker from attending a meeting of parliamentarians at UN headquarters in New York.

Washington denied a visa request from Ricardo Alarcon of Cuba to attend last week’s second World Conference of Speakers of Parliament, a meeting sponsored by the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

While the United States. as host country for the United Nations, is obliged to give visas to foreign officials for official UN business, a US official said the conference of parliamentarians was not a UN affair even though it used UN facilities.

Cuban Ambassador Orlando Requeijo Gual wrote Annan: “The permanent mission of Cuba to the United Nations wishes to protest strongly at the arbitrary decision and to state that it disagrees completely with the pretexts given.”

The Cuban delegation was also denied visas to attend the first World Conference of Speakers of Parliament, held in New York in 2000, Requeijo Gual said.
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http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Americas&month=September2005&file=World_News2005091325221.xml



Ricardo Alarcon, previous
member of Cuba's U.N. delegation
before _Bush became universal emperor.