Cuba launched the back-and-forth with a rambling speech to the council in support of Yugoslavia and condemning NATO's airstrikes as a genocide that served merely to consolidate U.S. control over the world.
``NATO's war has filled the coffers of smart-weapons manufacturers and producers of silly TV shows,'' Cuban Ambassador Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla said.
Deputy U.S. Ambassador Peter Burleigh said he was so shocked by the ambassador's ``total avoidance to the human realities in Kosovo'' that he felt compelled to respond.
``Apparently, the well-documented phenomenon of massive ethnic cleansing, the terrorization and brutalization of the civilian population is not allowed to register on the official Cuban mind,'' Burleigh said.
The Cuban ambassador responded by saying he only spoke of facts that had been omitted by council members in the day's debate on a resolution authorizing an international peace force for Kosovo.
The debate was held, he said, so the United States could use the United Nations to legitimize its attack on Yugoslavia.
The Netherlands joined in the acrimonious fight to denounce Cuba for clinging ``pathetically'' to the argument that the sovereignty of a country is more important than the protection of its own people.
``We can perhaps explain the Cuban representative's statement as an illustration of the anachronism that Cuba itself increasingly represents,'' said the deputy Dutch ambassador, Alphons Hamer.
Rodriguez Parrilla responded with one last lick.
``The colonial powers of yesteryear cannot come here and give us lessons of humanism today,'' he said.
© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press