US using its position to kill US!

US bars Cuba from attending New York conference

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Cuba complained to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday that the United States had barred its national assembly speaker from attending a meeting of parliamentarians at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Washington denied a visa request from Ricardo Alarcon of Cuba to attend last week's second World Conference of Speakers of Parliament, a meeting sponsored by the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

While the United States. as host country for the United Nations, is obliged to give visas to foreign officials for official U.N. business, a U.S. official said the conference of parliamentarians was not a U.N. affair even though it used U.N. facilities.

Cuban Ambassador Orlando Requeijo Gual wrote Annan: "The permanent mission of Cuba to the United Nations wishes to protest strongly at the arbitrary decision and to state that it disagrees completely with the pretexts given."

The Cuban delegation was also denied visas to attend the first World Conference of Speakers of Parliament, held in New York in 2000, Requeijo Gual said.

Alarcon has applied for a visa from Washington to attend a three-day world summit at U.N. headquarters opening on Wednesday, Cuban officials said. He was expected to be granted the visa and to head the Cuban delegation, the officials said.

President Fidel Castro, who last traveled to U.N. headquarters for the 2000 Millennium Summit, was not expected in New York for this year's summit, the officials said.

On what moral basis can the UN be kept in the US?

Move the UN - NOW!