Though the United States has won a key battle in its decades-old struggle with Cuba, Washington may find it harder to push for real international action against Havana.

U.S. diplomats Tuesday achieved the adoption of a U.N. statement, criticising Cuba’s downing on Saturday of two private civilian planes from Miami. The U.N. admonishment emerged after two nights of diplomatic tussles.

The Security Council “strongly deplores the shooting down by the Cuban air force of two civil aircraft on 24 Feb. 1996 which apparently has resulted in the death of four persons,” says the legally non-binding statement.

Washington scored a victory in securing the statement, since two powerful Security Council members — Russia and China — had initially said they would back no U.N. action until they had heard further from Cuba’s foreign minister Roberto Robaina.

But U.S. arm-twisting prevailed.

Many U.N. diplomats told IPS the victory boils down to an election-year boost for President Bill Clinton, who Monday vowed harsh action against Cuba for the shooting down of four members of the right-wing, Cuban-American group ‘Brothers to the Rescue’.

“They had to get action on this (statement) tonight,” one Council diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS Moonday night as the body’s consultations dragged on. “While this is going on, the (U.S. election) primaries are not the news. Cuba is the news.”

The diplomat contended that it was a major political challenge for Washington to obtain some criticism of the Cuban shootdown before Cuban-American exiles and Republican opponents chastised Clinton for weakness.

“The minimum we expect is for the Council to condemn this act…in a timely manner,” acknowledged U.S. spokesman James Rubin Monday night.

But rather than “condemn” the act, the Council chose to “deplore” the shootdown, in what diplomats here explain is a softer stance.

What the statement does not do, some diplomats argue, is pave the way for tougher measures, including the possibility of international sanctions against Havana. Rather, China’s tough stance against Council action and Russia’s insistence that the statement be watered down indicate a tough fight before anything further happens.

The Council statement, read by U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright, calls for an investigation of the shootdown by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and for a report back to the Council “as soon as possible.”

“The Council will consider that report and any further information presented to it without delay,” Albright read.

For U.S. diplomats, those words help build the case for a drive for tougher international sanctions on Cuba. The United States has maintained a commercial embargo of Cuba since 1961. Clinton Monday said he would strengthen those sanctions and bar charter flights between the two countries.

Albright said the Council statement was part of an effort to build the case for stronger action against Havana. As another U.S. diplomat put it, “In an international body such as this, one first has to establish that a crime has been committed.”

But the Council statement does not do that explicitly. Under pressure from Moscow and Beijing, Washington dropped language calling the shootdown a crime. The Tuesday statement merely notes that, under the 1944 Chicago Convention, “states must refrain from the use of weapons against civil aircraft in flight.”

Cuba’s U.N. ambassador Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla countered that the Council has only been presented with a “partial and unilateral interpretation” of the Chicago Convention. The Convention, he argued, should not allow civil aviation to be used for purposes incompatible with their civil nature.

He contended that the Brothers to the Rescue planes, however, were “engaged in a campaign aimed at subverting Cuba’s constitutional order.” He blamed the United States for allowing Cuban exile groups to carry out such acts under its protection.

“The intolerance of these extreme-right gangsters has become the rule” in Miami, Florida, where Brothers to the Rescue and many other groups are based, Rodriguez told the Council.

Rodriguez said the group has previously been warned for violating Cuban airspace, and that one of the pilots had been warned of the risks of entering Cuba’s air defense zone Saturday.

“It is not international peace and security that were threatened today,” Rodriguez said. “On the contrary, it was the peace, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of Cuba which has been endangered for more than 35 years.”

The Cuban ambassador offered to provide U.N. delegations with a chronology of violations of Cuban airspace in recent years.

Both the U.S. and Cuban delegations continue their public relations battle, with what one U.S. diplomat called “competing shows” of what happened Saturday.