Biden administration expected to lift ‘terrorism’ designation for Cuba: Report | News about Joe Biden

With less than a week left in office, United States President Joe Biden is expected to remove the designation of Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” according to anonymous sources familiar with his plans.

The Associated Press reported the story on Tuesday, citing US officials. But the move is likely to be a symbolic measure rather than a permanent policy.

With President-elect Donald Trump set to take office on January 20, the decision could be quickly reversed under the new administration. Still, the Biden administration pressed ahead, notifying Congress of its intent.

“The assessment has been completed and we have no information to support the designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism,” a White House official told the AFP news agency.

Cuban officials, meanwhile, announced that the announcement was long overdue. On social media, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez called Biden’s actions “positive” but “limited” in their effectiveness.

“Cuba should never have been included in an arbitrary list of state sponsors of terrorism,” he said wrote. “It was an arbitrary and politically motivated designation with a very severe impact on the Cuban population, harming the economy, causing shortages and encouraging migration to the US.”

However, this is not the first time that the label against Cuba has been revoked and reimposed. And Republicans quickly announced their intention to fight the change.

“Today’s decision is unacceptable on its merits,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, the Cuban-American representative, said in a statement to the media.

“The terrorism developed by the Cuban regime has not stopped. I will work with President Trump and my colleagues to immediately reverse and limit the damage from that decision.”

Cold War politics

Cuba was first designated a “state sponsor of terrorism” in 1982, under the presidency of conservative leader Ronald Reagan.

The US State Department explains on its website that Cuba is being sanctioned because of its “long history of providing advice, safe haven, communications, training and financial support to guerrilla groups and individual terrorists”.

The mark was made during the last decade of the Cold War. Diplomatic relations between the two countries had long been severed by that point, in large part because of Cuba’s close ties to the former Soviet Union, America’s Cold War adversary.

Cuba had also weathered a decades-long US trade embargo by that point.

The designation as a “state sponsor of terrorism”, however, further isolated the Caribbean country, limiting its ability to engage in financial transactions with US institutions and prohibiting it from receiving US aid.

Ahead of Tuesday’s announcement, only three countries other than Cuba had been identified as “state sponsors of terrorism” in the US. Among them are North Korea, Iran and Syria.

Back and forth

However, Biden’s decision echoes that of his close Democratic ally, the former president Barack Obama.

Biden served as vice president during two of Obama’s terms, including in 2015, when his administration pursued “to dissolve” in the relationship of the USA with Cuba.

In April of that year, Obama announced that he would remove Cuba from the list of “state sponsors of terrorism”, after meetings with then Cuban President Raul Castro.

At the time, Obama assured Congress that Cuba had “provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future.”

A few months later, in July 2015, Obama went a step further and declared that the US would re-establish formal diplomatic relations with Cuba for the first time since the 1960s.

“Instead of supporting democracy and opportunity for the Cuban people, our well-intentioned efforts to isolate Cuba have increasingly had the opposite effect: cementing the status quo and isolating the United States from our neighbors in this hemisphere,” Obama said at the time. “We don’t have to be trapped in the past.”

He noted that Cuba is less than 150 kilometers (90 miles) off the coast of Florida.

But when Trump succeeded Obama as president in 2017, he took a tougher approach to foreign policy, including sanctions to Cuban products.

On January 12, 2021, in waning days of his first term, Trump put Cuba back on the list “state sponsors of terrorism”.

“With this action, we will once again hold the Cuban government accountable and send a clear message: The Castro regime must end its support for international terrorism and the subversion of the US judiciary,” Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at the time. statement.

He accused Cuba of “feeding, housing and providing medical care for murderers, bombers and hijackers” for decades.

The Cuban government, meanwhile blown up change as “hypocrisy” and “political opportunism”.

Political bloc

After Trump was re-elected for a second term in November, there was speculation that Biden himself might make a similar move, using the final days of his presidency to reverse Trump’s decision.

On Nov. 15, for example, a group of Democratic lawmakers, led by outgoing Rep. Barbara Lee, sent a letter to the Biden White House calling for “immediate action” to address the worsening humanitarian situation in Cuba.

The toll is indicated Hurricane Rafael on the island, as well as the crumbling energy infrastructure in the country, which led to frequent fainting.

“The situation not only causes enormous suffering for the Cuban people, but also poses serious risks to US national security interests,” the letter said. “If not resolved, the crisis will almost certainly spur increased migration, strain US border management systems and completely destabilize the already tense Caribbean region.”

By removing Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” the letter’s authors indicated that more oil sources could reach the island, thereby “facilitating access to energy and economic assistance for the Cuban people.”

But Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida denounced such a proposal as an “unacceptable risk.”

His country has a large population of Cuban refugees who fled repression and economic instability in Cuba – and who make up a powerful Republican voting bloc.

“The Biden administration’s 11th-hour calls from Communist sympathizers in the Democratic Party for President Biden to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism are not only ignorant, they are dangerous,” Scott said in a statement to the Florida Phoenix publication. .

Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, Sen. Marco Rubio, is a descendant of Cuban immigrants and has also denounced efforts to lift restrictions on the island’s government.

He previously called Obama’s efforts to normalize relations “unilateral concessions“.