UN human rights watchdog calls on Cuba

The top UN human rights watchdog narrowly passed a resolution calling on Cuba to accept a visit by a rights investigator but failed to approve an amendment criticising the country’s recent crackdown on the opposition.

Cuba immediately claimed victory. “This is a new moral victory for Cuba,” Fidel Castro’s government said in a statement read on state television in Cuba. For the US, defeat of the tougher proposal was "a hard setback in its obsessive anti-Cuban campaign", it said.

The 53-nation Human Rights Commission voted by 24 votes to 20 in favour of a resolution presented by Peru and Uruguay urging Cuba to accept a visit by a UN investigator, French jurist Christine Chanet. There were nine abstentions.