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Venezuela Condemns US Maneuvers against Cuba

Orlando Oramas Leon, Special Correspondent

Geneva, Mar 16 (Prensa Latina) It is scandalous that the US tries to point at Cuba on the human rights issue, denounced Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Vice Minister Maria Pilar Hernandez, who ratified her country´s condemnation of those manouvers.

Speaking to Prensa Latina on Wednesday, Maria Pilar Hernandez asserted the Caribbean island had proven how dignity was practiced, irrespective of threats and military, political and economic aggressions.

Pilar Hernandez, a popular journalist and political expert in Caracas, said the White House sought to condemn Havana at the UN Human Rights Commission while the public witnessed the horror caused by tortures and abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison.

We resolutely oppose the Washington maneuvers, which demonstrate the double standard policy prevailing at the human rights commission, contended the vice minister in the commission´s 61st period of sessions held at the Geneva-based Palace of Nations.

She highlighted her rejection to human rights violations with the pretext of fighting terrorism, as it happened in jails in Iraq and the US-illegally held Guantanamo naval base.

Deaths, tortures and humiliations in Iraq and Guantanamo, in the name of the so-called anti-terrorist war, should be considered acts that degrade human conditions, Pilar Hernandez stressed.

Asked on US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice´s assessments against Venezuela, she maintained, "I would tell her that she does not know what she says because she knows nothing about the reality there. In good faith, I urge her to get well-informed."

The Venezuelan vice minister of Foreign Affairs also called for changes at the commission and the UN, chiefly the strengthening of its role and work of the General Assembly, and highly praised the Bolivarian revolution achievements in health, education and social, economic and cultural rights.

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