Cuban leader Raul Castro condemned President Barack Obama’s administration for maintaining a five- decade-old U.S. trade embargo against his Communist island nation.

The embargo runs counter to “almost unanimous” demands from the international community for an end to the measures and “promises of changes of the new government in the U.S.,” Castro said today in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, at a summit of an 118-member group of developing nations.

“The reality today is that the illegal blockade in place for nearly five decades is still being applied as strictly as ever against Cuba,” he said.

Obama in April removed restrictions on travel by Cuban- Americans to Cuba and on sending money to relatives on the island. His administration has said it has no plans to lift the trade embargo.

The U.S. imposed an embargo on Cuba in 1960 after Fidel Castro, who came to power in a 1959 revolution, expropriated land owned by American citizens and companies and allied with the Soviet Union. Raul Castro succeeded his brother as president last year.

Source: Bloomberg Press