UNITED NATIONS — The United States found itself embarrassed and deserted by its allies Tuesday as the General Assembly voted by a wide margin to demand the lifting of the latest American economic embargo against Fidel Castro's Cuba.

The vote in favor of the Cuban resolution was 59 to 3, with 71 abstentions. Only Israel and Romania supported the United States. America's NATO allies such as Canada, France and Spain voted with Cuba. Such staunch friends as Britain, Germany and Belgium would do no more than abstain. Even Russia, so needful of American aid, only abstained.

Resolutions of the General Assembly, unlike those of the Security Council, are not binding in international law. But the vote amounted to a stinging rebuke for a country that has dominated the United Nations since the end of the Cold War.

Friends joined enemies in supporting Cuba because of their anger over the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, which expands the total American embargo on trade with Cuba to foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies.

The law, passed by Congress and signed by President Bush in October, also prohibits all ships, whether foreign or not, from visiting American ports within six months of docking in Cuba.

The law was seen by many governments as an attempt by a foreign power to regulate their domestic companies. Though controlled by American capital, these companies are regarded, legally, as just like all others, operating under the same regulations.

The United States has maintained an embargo of one kind or another against trade with Cuba for more than three decades. But Tuesday's vote was the first time that the Castro government has ever won support in the United Nations for a resolution denouncing the embargo.

Cuba tried to introduce a similar resolution a year ago. But many governments--under American pressure--persuaded Cuba to withdraw it then. Passage of the Cuban Democracy Act in the intervening months made such pressure useless this time.

American officials had realized earlier in the week that trying to head off the Cuban resolution was hopeless.

But Ambassador Alexander Watson, deputy chief of the U.S. Mission, tried anyway to convince the General Assembly that the Cubans were using the Cuban Democracy Act as a pretext to involve the United Nations in the bilateral relations between the United States and Castro.