Cuba gloats over UN vote, US Republican losses

HAVANA, Nov 10 (Reuters) The Cuban government gloated about the latest United Nations vote to end a long-running US trade embargo and was equally pleased by the heavy Republican losses in America's congressional elections.

Both events, along with Tuesday's election of leftist Daniel Ortega as president of Nicaragua, were viewed as a major slap in the face for US President George W Bush.

''183 against 1,'' blared a headline in the state-controlled newspaper Granma, referring to the 183 countries that voted for a UN resolution on Wednesday calling for the US to drop the four-decades-old trade embargo against Cuba.

It added a much smaller ''+3'' after the ''1'' for the three other UN members -- Israel, Marshall Islands and Palau -- that voted with the United States against the resolution.

The UN. resolution has been passed each year for the past 15 years, but the United States is not bound by it and has ignored it.

In fact, the Bush administration has tightened the embargo, which has earned the enmity of the Cuban government.

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, appearing on state-run television, called the UN vote a ''tremendous victory'' and said it showed the weakness of the US government's ''moral authority.'' ''It has to be very tough for the American diplomats,'' he said.

''Imagine the loneliness of this defeat.'' Perez Roque said Ortega's election win in Nicaragua was also a big loss for the Bush administration because it had worked to defeat him.

In the US election, Democrats won control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, which will make it difficult for Republican Bush to push through his political agenda in his remaining two years in office.

''This victory by the Democrats signifies a powerful defeat for Bush and the group of ultra-conservatives in power with him,'' Perez Roque said. ''It signifies that the American people are realizing how they have been lying to them.'' ''(Cuban President) Fidel (Castro) has always said that to get the American people to support an unjust cause you have deceive them,'' he said.

REUTERS BDP RN0928