EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS - For the 13th straight year, the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly urged the United States to end its more than four decade trade embargo against Cuba, rejecting Washington's argument that Fidel Castro is "a tyrant" who denies basic human rights to Cubans.

The Cuban-sponsored resolution calling for the embargo to be repealed "as soon as possible" was approved by a vote of 179-4 with one abstention, very similar to last year's vote of 179-2 with two abstentions.

The resolution is not legally binding and Cuba's Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said the U.S. government has ignored it for the last 12 years. But he said "that does not diminish the importance and momentousness" of the vote to the Cuban people and to show the worldwide opposition to the 43-year-old trade embargo.

Speaking just before the vote, Perez Roque noted the resolution was being considered just five days before the U.S. presidential elections "awaited by all with secret hopes."

"It is true that these four years have been terrible for the world," he said. "Cuba, however, awaits and works with optimism and confidence. It knows that it is right. It knows that time is in its favor. It sees the ever-increasing rejection of the blockade right within the United States."

Perez Roque did not mention either President Bush or his Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry. But he cited a number of actions by the Bush administration, including new restrictions on tourism, its refusal to allow Cuba to import two drugs to treat AIDS, and an announcement Oct. 9 that the United States had set up a group to freeze the movement of hard currency to and from Cuba.

That announcement by Daniel Fisk, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, led to Castro's decision to ban the local use of U.S. dollars and replace them with Cuban convertible pesos, the minister said.

When Perez Roque walked to the podium in the General Assembly hall to speak, U.S. diplomats walked out. They returned afterward to cast a "no" vote on the resolution, joined by Israel, Marshall Islands and Palau. Micronesia abstained.

U.S. Ambassador Oliver Garza, an adviser on western hemisphere affairs, told the General Assembly earlier that "if Cubans are jobless, hungry, or lack medical care, as the regime admits, it is because of the failings of the current government."

"The resolution is an attempt to blame the communist regime's failed economic policies on the United States and to divert attention from its human rights record," Garza said. "The Cuban government is not a victim, as it contends. Rather, it is a tyrant, aggressively punishing anyone who dares to have a differing opinion."

But speaker after speaker in the General Assembly debate opposed the U.S. embargo, imposed after Castro defeated the CIA-backed assault at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.

Qatar's U.N. Ambassador Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, chairman of the Group of 77 which represents mainly developing countries and China, said the embargo undermines international law and "severely curtails the freedom of trade and investment."