UNITED NATIONS, Nov 5: The General Assembly, for the sixth year in a row, overwhelmingly called today for an end to the US economic embargo against Cuba that Washington has imposed for more than three decades.The vote on the Cuban-sponsored resolution was 143 to three, with 17 abstentions - the biggest majority since the issue first came before the assembly in 1992.

The United States, Israel and Uzbekistan voted against.

A virtually identical resolution last year received 137 votes, with the same three countries opposed and 25 abstentions.

As in the past, even friends and allies of the United States - including all 15 members of the European Union - voted for the resolution. They are irked by the so-called ``extraterritorial'' effects of US legislation that they regard as violating their sovereignty by subjecting them to US laws and regulations.

The resolution's preamble referred specifically to the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which allows US citizens who were Cuban nationals before President Fidel Castro's 1959 Communist revolution to sue in US court foreign companies or individuals who ``traffic'' in confiscated property.

The law, which has been toughened in the past year, also allows US visas to be denied to shareholders and officers of foreign firms operating those properties in Cuba.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.