Source: Prensa Latina, 12 March 2011.
As part of its blockade of Cuba, the United States seized 4.207 million USD in funds allocated to Cuba by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for the first quarter of 2011, Cuba charged.
This action adds to a long list of examples of extraterritorial application of the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba for more than 50 years, said Orlando Hernandez, deputy minister of foreign trade and investment, on Friday.
The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control froze the funds for Cuban health care in January, according to a report by the United Nations Development Program in January, Hernandez said. This annual financing had been allocated for projects in Cuba of the World Fund against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
The seizure of funds is an illegal action that seriously obstructs the international cooperation provided by the UN system through its funds and programs, Hernandez said.
Worse still, the seized funds are for combating and preventing pandemics that the Cuban government and international community are devoting their greatest efforts to eradicate, he said.
The official statement emphasized that this unilateral measure on the part of Washington would affect the implementation and continuation of social projects focused on vulnerable groups of the Cuban population, as well as the universal character of UN agencies, funds and programs
