Diplomat: U.S. Embargo Cost Cuba over $100 bn

Communist Cuba on Tuesday accused the United States' economic embargo on Havana of costing it $116 billion in economic losses over five decades.

"Through March (2014), the economic cost to the Cuban people of the U.S. blockade has been $116.8 billion," said Deputy Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno.

The Americas' only Communist nation plans to introduce a resolution at the U.N. General Assembly this month seeking an end to the comprehensive U.S. sanctions, Moreno said. That body has approved similar non-binding condemnations in the past.

The United States has had a full economic sanctions regime clamped on Havana since 1963.

Moreno told reporters the effect of the sanctions had been "brutal."

The "blockade" as Cuba's government calls it is actually somewhat porous.

Cuba's biggest food supplier for over a decade has been the United States.

Framed as soft-assistance after a hurricane, the United States Congress passed a law in 2000 authorizing Havana to carry out cash-only purchases of U.S. food and agricultural products. That has been very big business for U.S. big agriculture year after year.