Los Angeles Times Service

Although the United States took a page from Arnold Schwarzenegger's script, quoting The Terminator in attacking Cuba's Communist government, the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday voted for the 12th consecutive year against Washington's four-decade-old economic embargo against Cuba.

Addressing the assembly before the symbolic annual vote, U.S. representative Sichan Siv said 'Cuba's best day is when the Cuban people have terminated Castro's evil, communist, dictatorial regime, and said to him, `Hasta la vista, baby!' ''

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque retorted, 'It is the people of Cuba who say, `Hasta la vista' to the blockade, 'hasta la vista' to genocide.''

The resolution received 179 votes to lift the economic embargo, with only the United States, Israel and the Marshall Islands voting to keep it. Micronesia and Morocco abstained.

While General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, they express the international community's will, and are considered to carry moral weight.

Cuba has been under a U.S. trade and travel embargo since Fidel Castro repelled a U.S.-backed attack on the Bay of Pigs in 1961. The ban is meant to pressure the Communist government to implement democratic changes, but Cuba argues that the trade restrictions are a form of ''genocide'' that violate its people's human rights.

The General Assembly has denounced the ban annually since 1991, and Cuba received six more votes this year.