Nov. 8 (Bloomberg) -- The United Nations General Assembly voted for the 15th consecutive year to urge an end to the 44- year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, a blockade that Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque called ``genocide.''

The non-binding resolution, which asks the U.S. to ``repeal and invalidate'' the embargo that has been in effect since 1962, three years after Fidel Castro seized control of the Caribbean island and transformed it into a bastion of communism, was adopted by a vote of 183 to 4.

Only Israel, Marshall Islands and Palau voted with the U.S. against the resolution. Micronesia abstained.

``The economic war unleashed by the U.S. against Cuba, the longest and most ruthless ever known, qualifies as an act of genocide and constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and the charter of the United Nations,'' Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said before the vote.

He said the embargo has cost Cuba $82 billion in economic damage.

The U.S. said the resolution was an attempt to shift blame for Castro's shortcomings and that the General Assembly should not deal with the question.

``The United States trade embargo is a bilateral issue and should not come before the General Assembly,'' U.S. envoy Ronald Godard told the General Assembly.

Cuban Freedom

``We maintain this embargo to demonstrate our continuing call for economic and political freedom for all Cubans,'' Godard said. ``The Cuban government's policy of systematically denying the human, economic, labor and political rights of its people over 47 years is the real source of the adverse effects on the Cuban people.''

Godard said the U.S. would ease restrictions on trade and travel after Cuba allows ``free and fair'' elections and the formation of independent trade unions.

Perez Roque challenged the moral authority of the U.S. to attack the Castro regime by citing the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's handling of the damage caused by hurricane Katrina in New Orleans last year.

``We all saw the heinous images from the Abu Ghraib prison, the heinous images of Guantanamo,'' he said. ``We know that they organized and still keep clandestine prisons and secret flights on which they carried drugged and handcuffed prisoners. We saw the horrendous images of Hurricane Katrina, when human beings were doomed to die for being black and poor.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Bill Varner in United Nations at wvarner@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 8, 2006 13:06 EST