State Department officials drafted a proposal to designate Cuba as a sponsor of terrorism, a last-minute foreign policy measure that would complicate the plans of the next Biden government to relax growing American pressure on Havana.
With three weeks to go until the inauguration day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo must decide whether to approve the plan, according to two American officials, a move that would also serve as a thanks to Cuban Americans and other anti-Communist Latinos in Florida, who supported strongly President Trump and his Republican colleagues in the November elections.
It is not clear whether Pompeo decided to go ahead with the assignment. But Democrats and foreign policy experts believe Trump and his top officials are eager to find ways to restrict President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s first months in office and make it more difficult for Biden to reverse Trump – it was policies abroad. In recent weeks, Trump officials have also sought to increase American pressure and sanctions against China and Iran.
The discovery that a country “has repeatedly supported acts of international terrorism”, in the State Department’s official description of a state sponsoring terrorism, automatically triggers US sanctions against its government. If added to the list, Cuba would join only three other nations: Iran, North Korea and Syria.
The Biden government could act quickly to remove Cuba from the list. But doing so would require more than the touch of a presidential pen. The State Department would have to conduct a formal review, a process that could take several months.
A State Department spokeswoman said the agency did not discuss “deliberations or potential deliberations” about terrorist designations. The White House did not comment.
Democrats attacked Cuba’s proposal on Tuesday, criticizing what they called an 11-hour foreign policy change that unfairly limits Biden’s selection.
“It’s another move by this president with less than 23 days to go,” Rep. Gregory W. Meeks, a New York Democrat who is the new chairman of the House’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a telephone interview.
“He’s trying to handcuff the new administration,” added Meeks.
The State Department removed Cuba from its list of sponsors of terrorism in 2015, after President Barack Obama announced the normalization of relations between Washington and Havana for the first time since the country’s 1959 communist revolution, which he called a relic of Cold War. In exchange for promises of political and social reform, Obama lifted economic sanctions, relaxed travel and trade restrictions and reopened an embassy in Havana for the first time in decades. In 2016, he became the first American president to visit the island since Calvin Coolidge.
The Reagan administration added Cuba to the list of terrorism in 1982 for supporting left-wing insurgents in Latin America. During the Obama era, the State Department cited it as a “safe haven” for Basque separatists and Colombian rebels. But Obama administration officials finally concluded that no terrorist threat was posed by elderly Basques, nor by Colombian rebels who participated in the peace negotiations in Havana that led to a 2016 peace agreement with the Colombian government.
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They were also willing to accept that the Cuban government housed some wanted fugitives in the United States, including Joanne D. Chesimard, 73, a former member of the Black Liberation Army. Ms. Chesimard, who now goes by the name Assata Shakur, remains on the FBI’s list of the most wanted terrorists for killing a New Jersey state police officer in 1973.
In a possible preview of a reclassification, the State Department notified Congress in May that Cuba was among the five countries it said was “not fully cooperating” with American counterterrorism efforts – the first time since 2015 that Cuba has not been certified to do it.
The notification cited Cuba’s refusal to request Colombia, an American ally, to extradite 10 leaders of the country’s National Liberation Army who lived in Havana after the group took responsibility for the bombing of a Bogotá police academy. in January 2019, which killed 22 people.
But Democrats say the idea that Cuba represents a terrorist threat to the outside world is political fiction.
“This is complete nonsense. Cuba is not a state that sponsors terrorism, ”said Ben Rhodes, who, as Obama’s deputy national security adviser, played a central role in mediating the government’s agreement with Havana.
Mr. Trump denounced the agreement as “terrible and wrong” and revoked many of its provisions. During visits to South Florida, he boasted that he was facing communism in Latin America and warned that Biden would not, a message that has proved popular with Cuban Americans and other voters hostile to Havana.
As a candidate, Biden pledged to change American policy again, saying that “he would immediately reverse Trump’s failed policies that inflicted damage on the Cuban people and did nothing to advance democracy and human rights.”
Cuba’s repressive government largely disappointed hopes of liberalizing after the death of its revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, in November 2016. Havana continues to arrest and detain dissidents and repress a recent hunger strike by artists and other activists in the capital , evidence for many Republicans that their government does not deserve cordial relations from Washington.
Trump administration officials also strongly criticized the Cuban government’s support for Venezuela’s socialist leader, Nicolás Maduro, whom Trump tried for years in vain to lift from power.
In an opinion essay published this month in The Miami Herald, Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida and an influential voice in Cuban politics, asked Biden to “support dissidents” there and urged him “not to be one again.” “supported Cuba’s policy – and launched a lifeline to Raúl Castro’s dictatorial regime.”
US officials said the plan to return Cuba to the list of sponsors of terrorism was developed, breaking the standard process, by the State Department’s Western Hemisphere Affairs Bureau, rather than the Counterterrorism Bureau, which would normally play a central role. in such a decision.
Mr. Rhodes called this evidence of a politically motivated process. “This is a sign that they know that they cannot include Cuba on the list of merit,” he said.
Critics say the Trump administration has begun to politicize these designations, which should be a matter of national security. This month, the United States removed Sudan from its list of sponsors of terrorism days before the African nation joined the list of Arab nations that established diplomatic relations with Israel, one of Trump’s top priorities.
The Trump administration recently cracked down on Cuban companies directed or affiliated with the Cuban military. Last week, the Treasury Department blacklisted three companies.
A recent report commissioned by the State Department revealed that US embassy officials in Havana fell ill in 2016 with what was probably a microwave weapon of unknown origin. The Cuban government has denied any knowledge of such attacks.
Pranshu Verma contributed reports.