Geneva ? The top United Nations human rights watchdog passed a resolution Friday calling on Cuba to grant its citizens individual liberties such as freedom of speech, the press, association and assembly.

The U.N. Human Rights Commission, voting 23-21 with nine abstentions, also urged Cuba’s communist authorities to let a U.N. representative visit the island to monitor compliance a suggestion Cuba has rejected.

Cuban President Fidel Castro, center, participates in a government rally in Havana Province. Castro last week protested Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's ouster. Friday, the U.N. Human Rights Commission called on Cuba to grant its own citizens more rights.

But in an apparent reference to the 40-year-old U.S. embargo against Cuba, which most other nations oppose, the resolution recognized Cuban government efforts to “give effect to the social rights of the population despite an adverse international environment.”

Cuba insists it respects human rights by guaranteeing its people broad social services such as free health care and education, and that rich nations that fail to protect the poor are in no position to preach.

“None of (the resolution’s) sponsors has the moral authority to judge human rights in Cuba,” Cuban Ambassador Jorge Ivan Mora Godoy told the 53-nation commission.

The commission has voted to censure Cuba every year during the past decade except 1998. Cuba accused the United States of using strong-arm tactics to lobby support for the vote this year, a claim U.S. officials have denied.

“In recent days, the government of the United States has come exercising new and more brutal pressures at the Human Rights Commission with the objective of approving the project,” Cuba’s Foreign Ministry said in a communique published Friday in the Communist Party daily Granma.

The United States was one of several co-sponsors of the resolution, proposed by Uruguay.

Last month, Cuba said any Latin American country giving in to what it called U.S. pressure to sponsor a resolution condemning Cuba’s human rights record would be a “Judas.”

Cuba has been particularly disappointed with Mexico’s decision to join the vote this year. Mexico, the only Latin American country that refused to break diplomatic relations with Cuba after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, traditionally has abstained.

Censure by the U.N. body brings no penalties but draws international attention.