US Official: Embargo Kept Cuba From Meddling

The decades-old US trade embargo against Cuba has been "an absolute and resounding success," the Cuban-born US commerce secretary said today. Carlos Gutierrez told a Latin America conference that the policy has stopped the island's communist government from orchestrating military attacks. But the embargo, in place since 1962, has repeatedly come under fire from human rights groups and the UN.

The UN General Assembly has voted annually against the embargo since 1992, and will probably do so again next month, Reuters reports. But Gutierrez said that the US cannot be blamed for Cuba's economic failures. "When they have had resources, they've had military adventures," he said. "When they have had resources, the Cuban people haven't seen a better life." (More Fidel Castro stories.)