Havana, Cuba.- Cuba restated Thursday that the application of Helms-Burton law in its territory is null because it is a US law.

Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, director of the US of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba, stressed at a press conference that no sovereign country that respects itself would allow its implementation.

He explained that in our case, Cuba has a law passed in 1996 that states this norm null and void. Therefore, he highlighted, its validity in Cuba is null, there is no effect.

The Helms-Burton law is very broad and very complex, it is quite unique, he said. It is a law aims at defining what the US Government´s behavior may be in a specific issue of foreign policy, in this case Cuba.

He pointed out that the legislation pursues several purposes, firstly – he specified – internationalize the economic blockade and that the international community joins that action, so it is established that the State Department report Congress how this extraterritoriality is being applied against Cuba.

By doing so, he stressed, the US seeks to perpetuate the blockade, codifies it and establishes that all existing measures, plus those included with the law, can be only modified by a decision of the US parliament.

The law also seeks to prevent foreign capital from investing in Cuba, trying to scare away the potential investor, so some aspects of the law try to punish the investor if they spend on properties nationalized by the Cuban authorities early the Revolution, Fernandez indicated.

Therefore, he stressed, they are based on the falsehood that the 1960 nationalizations were illegitimate and improper, something that according to an analyst, the US Supreme Court defined in favor of Cuba.

The law also seeks to establish a kind of programs on how the future of Cuba would be totally devoid of sovereignty if the overthrow of the revolutionary government ocurred, the diplomat expressed.

In that sense, he said, it establishes a period of transit that would have a US administrator appointed by Washington, who would be responsible for ensuring that everything meant today by the social justice system, the socialist system in our country, is removed, he pointed out.

Besides, he made clear, he pursues one of his main ambitions that is that the claimants of nationalized properties be returned to them or be paid compensation for those properties.

Everything could be claimed or compensated. Until this or the entire payment occurs, the blockade could not be lifted. Those are the US purposes with the law, stressed the Cuban Foreign Ministry official.