Cuba declines OAS offer.(Organization of American States)(Brief article)

0 Comments | Caribbean Update, July, 2009

Cuba declined to return to the Organization of American States (OAS), despite hailing a landmark decision to lift the body's 47-year ban on Havana as a "major victory.", reports AFP (June 5, 2009):

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 initial reaction to the decision. But the move "does not alter what Cuba thought yesterday, the day before yesterday and today," he said. Cuba, the Americas' only one-party communist regime, and an OAS critic, has previously shown no interest in rejoining the organization, which it derided as a "pestilent corpse" in state media. Former Cuban president Fidel Castro, in an article in the state-run...