Havana, November 4 (RHC)-- Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez denounced Monday that U.S. authorities are using extreme pressure tactics and blackmail in their quest to bring a change in the usually overwhelming vote of the Cuban-sponsored resolution at the United Nations that demands the lifting of the blockade.

"Far from heeding the repeated call of the overwhelming majority of the international community to cease this policy, the United States is carrying out a new maneuver to try to justify its continuity,” he told media correspondents at the United Nations.

According to Rodriguez, the pressures have been concentrated primarily in Latin American countries.  He reported that in late October, the embassies of four Latin American nations were summoned in Washington by the State Department to obtain their vote against the draft resolution.

Cuba's foreign minister added that such meetings supplement direct efforts by U.S. embassies in the capitals of six Latin American countries to exert pressure to obtain the same goal.  The top Cuban diplomat rejected the crude way in which the Trump Administration uses arm-twisting and blackmail in the fulfillment of its foreign policy objectives.

After the embarrasing failure of its attempts in 2018 to amend the draft resolution against the blockade of Cuba, this year the State Department is seeking to reduce the number of votes in favor of the initiative.

"Cuba knows that in its fight against the blockade it counts on the unanimous support of the Latin American peoples and hope that no government in the region will succumb to Washington's anti-Cuban rulings, turning its back on the will of their peoples, world public opinion, international law and the most elementary norms of ethics and justice,” Rodriguez said.

The UN General Assembly is expected to vote next Thursday, November 7, on the draft solution calling for an end to the U.S. blockade against Cuba, which for 27 consecutive years has had the support of the vast majority of the international community.