The European Community has warned US President George Bush that the community's relations with the United States could be seriously damaged if the Torricelli Bill, which bans business between US subsidiaries and Cuba, is signed into law.
In an October 8 statement, the community says it cannot accept Washington unilaterally determining and restricting EC economic and commercial relations with any nation.
The statement warns that any US action affecting business conducted outside the United States would violate international law and the sovereignty of independent nations.
In an interview with Radio Havana, the British ambassador to Havana, Leycester Coltman, said subsidiaries of US companies operating in British territory will have to abide by British laws. He pointed out that Britain will take the measures required to ensure that the bill doesn't affect trade between the London and Havana.
Canada's ambassador Julie Loranger, in an interview with the newspaper Granma, said that if Bush approves the bill, it would seriously harm Canada's trade and would force it to take measures.
The Canadian ambassador stressed that her country is interested in trading with Cuba, noting that trade with the island is very important at the moment. She said Canada's foreign minister sent a letter to the US secretary of state expressing hopes that President Bush would veto the Torricelli Bill, as he did with the recent Mack Amendment because of strong objections by Canada and other western countries trading with Cuba.
Ambassador Loranger stressed that foreign firms in her country must abide by Canadian laws. If they accept the Torricelli Bill, she said, firm representatives could be fined or sent to jail.
Mario Moya Palencia, Mexico's ambassador to Havana, says his country's relations with Cuba will continue as usual. The traditional friendship and trade relations between Cuba and Mexico, he stressed, will continue. Palencia described the anti-Cuban legislation as outrageous because it goes against free trade among nations, the principles of non-intervention and international law.
Ecuador's ambassador to the United Nations, Jose Ayala Lasso, says that any law legalising coercion, sanctions or measures inflicting human suffering runs counter to the new world order.
Uruguayan lawmakers and intellectuals say the Torricelli Bill is a brutal crime against basic humanitarian principles.
The Uruguayan representatives, more than 60 in number, issued a statement on October 9 saying the US initiative seeks to starve the Cuban people to death.
With the Torricelli Bill, says the document, Washington takes one step further in its ambition to become the world's policeman and to dictate what form relations among the countries of the world should take.
Participants in the third continental meeting of indigenous, black and popular resistance, in Nicaragua, condemned the US intensification of its 30-year blockade against Cuba. They also demanded the withdrawal of US troops from the US naval base in Guantánamo.
[Radio Havana dispatches via Pegasus.]