Friday, November 17, 2006

HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters): Cuba's central bank blasted Swiss banks UBS and Credit Suisse on Thursday for cutting off business dealings with Cuba, saying they had bowed to US pressure.

In a statement, the central bank said the United States' long-standing economic embargo against the communist nation led to the banks' "pitiful" decision.

"The actions of these two banks have nothing to do with respect of the law or looking after their banking transactions. It is simply an act of submission to the US, which they don't dare confess," the Cuban bank said.

The Swiss banks said on Sunday in response to a published report they had stopped doing business with "sensitive" countries," including Cuba, citing the difficulties and expenses involved.

A UBS spokesman said other "sensitive countries" included North Korea, Iran and Sudan.

The US government under President George W. Bush has tightened its four-decade-old Cuba embargo by imposing regulations on dollar transactions that make it more difficult to do business there.

The embargo is aimed at undermining the government that, under Fidel Castro, has run Cuba since a 1959 revolution.

The actions of the Swiss banks, the Cuban bank said, are "an irrefutable example of how the US imposes it laws outside its borders and decides with whom institutions of other supposedly free and sovereign nations can and cannot do business."

Despite the pullout of UBS and Credit Suisse, it said a growing number of countries and organizations are refusing to follow "an empire whose constant failures in recent weeks are just the tip of the iceberg of its irreversible decline."

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