SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — The Organization of American States voted by acclamation on Wednesday to revoke the 1962 measure suspending communist Cuba, overturning a landmark of the Cold War in the hemisphere.
“The Cold War has ended this day in San Pedro Sula,” said Honduran President Manuel Zelaya immediately following the announcement. “We begin a new era of fraternity and tolerance.”
The action doesn’t mean Cuba will return to the 34- member body that helps coordinate policies and mediates disputes throughout the Americas. Cuban officials have repeatedly insisted they have no interest in returning to an organization they consider a tool of the United States.
And if Cuba changes its mind, the agreement calls for “a process of dialogue” in line with OAS “practices, proposals and principles” — a veiled allusion to agreements on human rights and democracy.
“This is a moment of rejoicing for all of Latin America,” Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Fander Falconi told reporters after the session.
The decision was taken by consensus, meaning the United States accepted it, although Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had lobbied personally for requiring Cuba to make democratic reforms and improve respect for human rights.
“The historic action taken today eliminates a distraction from the past and allows us to focus on the realities of today,” State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood said in Washington.
Wood also portrayed the resolution’s reference to OAS principles as a victory for U.S. diplomacy, noting that most countries had favored automatically readmitting Cuba.
The United States won Cuba’s suspension from the hemispheric body in January 1962. It was just nine months after Fidel Castro first publicly described Cuba’s system as socialist and after a disastrous U.S.-backed exile invasion of the country flopped at the Bay of Pigs.
