The Trump administration will put Cuba back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism on Monday, according to two senior State Department officials, who are reversing an Obama-era decision and hampering the rapid revival of diplomatic ties with Havana by President-elect Joe Biden.
Secretary of State Michael Pompeo is expected to indicate that he is designating Cuba because the country continues to host American fugitives, including Joanne Chesimard, convicted of murdering a New Jersey state soldier in 1973 and rejecting a request. of Colombian extradition for members of the national liberation army linked to a 2019 bombing that killed 22.
Cuba joins only Syria, Iran and North Korea, nations most condemned for promoting terrorism, on the US list. Cuba had originally been included in the list in 1982, but was withdrawn by President Barack Obama in 2015 while trying to improve economic and diplomatic relations with the Caribbean nation.
Biden has indicated that he wants to reactivate Obama-era politics to ease economic and travel restrictions in the hope that closer ties and more capitalism will pave the way for democratic change in Cuba. This strategy it could include reducing travel, investment, and remittance restrictions for the island nation that are perceived to be disproportionately detrimental to Americans and ordinary Cubans.
Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. labeled Cuba a “Troika of Tyranny” with Nicaragua and Venezuela. His movements were popular among Cuban-Americans in Florida, a state Trump won in his re-election with the help of Cuban-American refugees, Venezuelan-Americans, and other anti-communist Latino voters.
His administration had spent months reflecting on the measure of the sponsor of terrorism. Two senior State Department officials, who asked not to be identified in discussions on internal deliberations, said the policy played no role in the decision to re-appoint Cuba and said several administrations, including the of Obama, they had made decisions about the island at the end of their presidencies. .
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Officials said the process to get Cuba back on the list was long, and if the United States had wanted to play politics, they would have re-appointed Cuba before the November presidential election, not later.
The administration had indicated since May that it could restore the designation in Cuba. It was then that officials announced that Cuba was returning to a separate list of nations that did not fully cooperate with U.S. counterterrorism efforts for its refusal to extradite members of the National Liberation Army.
According to the State Department, state sponsors of terrorism are countries that “have repeatedly supported acts of international terrorism.” One official said there are legal precedents that go back to the presidency of George HW Bush to keep a country on the list to host terrorists even if it is not actively supporting terrorist acts.
Cuba and the U.S., enemies after the late Fidel Castro took power in 1959, established diplomatic relations in 2015 when Obama was president and Biden was vice president. The US facilitated a five-decade trade that and took other steps toward normalization, although ending U.S. restrictions would require an act of Congress.
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Despite nascent openings and increased foreign investment since the 1990s, Cuba’s economy continues to be heavily controlled by the government and the military.
During Trump’s tenure, he opened the door to lawsuits against companies that benefited from government-confiscated property in Cuba, banned educational travel and cruises there, and limited direct flights. Biden could remove Cuba from the terrorist list, but a formal review could delay the process by several months and rekindle the debate over Cuba’s communist leaders.