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The United States on Friday, Nov. 6, distanced itself from the election of Cuban diplomat Richard Tur de la Concepción to the UN Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), the body that reviews the organization’s spending. Washington had expelled him nine days earlier over an altercation at the General Assembly.
The General Assembly approved by consensus a slate with as many candidates as open seats for the 2027-2029 term. The United States did not block the decision, but Ambassador Jeff Bartos, the U.S. Representative for UN Management and Reform, put his objection on the record.
“Joining consensus, however, does not mean we endorse every candidate on the slate. The United States disassociates from the election of Cuba to the Advisory Committee,” Bartos said, according to video of his remarks.
The ACABQ is a subsidiary body of the General Assembly made up of 21 experts elected for three-year terms. It examines the Secretary-General’s budget proposals and advises member states on administrative and financial matters. Tur will join the committee in January 2027.
Bartos: “For this thuggery” the Assembly rewarded him
Bartos said his delegation had spent the past year pressing for cuts at the organization. “Together we delivered historic budget cuts, streamlined thousands of positions and ended decades of institutional waste,” he said.
“Yet today this Assembly has given hard-working taxpayers another reason to ask why bother. You elected an expelled Cuban regime crony to the very committee entrusted with scrutinizing billions in UN spending.”
Bartos accused Tur of trying, “just a couple of weeks ago,” to intimidate UN employees in order to silence Ambassador Mike Waltz, the U.S. permanent representative, and of assaulting an American diplomat who was filming him.
“And for this thuggery, we all of us, we all just by consensus, rewarded him with a $180,000-a-year tax-free stipend (…) For what? To telework from Havana, while your taxpayers, our taxpayers, foot the bill for the work we do here in New York.”
Bartos compared that sum with what an average Cuban worker earns in a year. Tur cannot serve from New York because he is barred from entering the United States.
A warning over U.S. funding for the UN
Bartos said the consensus did not honor the commitment owed to UN staff in the field, the people they protect and the taxpayers who fund that work. “Our consensus today does not honor that creed,” he said.
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“There is a debate raging in many of our countries over whether this institution deserves the continued funding from our taxpayers. We have fought over the last year to make the case that it does,” he said.
Early in his remarks, he also warned other delegations over talks on a second body: “Those of you in the room screwing around with the consensus on the independent Audit Committee, please take note that there are other ways to do this.”
The Oct. 27 altercation and the Cuban diplomat’s expulsion
The clash took place on Oct. 27, during the annual General Assembly debate on Cuba’s resolution against the U.S. embargo. As Waltz spoke about the privileges of the regime’s leadership and the military conglomerate GAESA, the Cuban delegation tried to interrupt him.
U.S. officials accused Tur, first secretary of Cuba’s mission to the UN, of shoving a U.S. diplomat and trying to grab the phone he was using to record the exchange. The Cuban government said Tur was defending himself because his personal space had been invaded.
The next day, Waltz announced that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had signed the expulsion order. The State Department confirmed that Tur left the country on Oct. 29.
Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Gerardo Peñalver welcomed him in Havana on Oct. 30. On X, Peñalver wrote that the young diplomat had firmly stood up to the U.S. delegation’s conduct, and he accused Washington of trying to sink Tur’s candidacy for a UN body.
At an earlier General Assembly session, Bartos had already signaled his rejection with a gesture: from the U.S. seat, he read The Double Life of Fidel Castro, the memoir of Juan Reinaldo Sánchez, Fidel Castro’s former bodyguard, about the dictator’s private life.
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