The Trump administration will put Cuba back on the list of terrorist sponsoring states on Monday, according to two senior State Department officials, reversing an Obama-era decision and making it more difficult for President-elect Joe Biden to quickly resume diplomatic ties with Havana.
Secretary of State Michael Pompeo must indicate that he is designating Cuba because the country continues to harbor American fugitives, including Joanne Chesimard, convicted of the murder of a New Jersey state police officer in 1973, and refuses a request for Colombian extradition of members of the National Liberation linked to a 2019 bombing that killed 22.
Cuba joins only Syria, Iran and North Korea – nations most widely condemned for fomenting terrorism – on the US list. Cuba had originally been included in the list in 1982, but was removed by President Barack Obama in 2015, when he sought to improve economic and diplomatic relations with the Caribbean nation.
Biden indicated that he wants to revive the Obama-era policy of loosening 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 restrictions on travel, investments and remittances to the island country that appear to disproportionately harm ordinary Americans and Cubans.
Under President Donald Trump, the United States labeled Cuba as part of the “Tyranny Troika” with Nicaragua and Venezuela. His actions were popular with Cuban-Americans in Florida, a state that Trump won in his run for re-election with the help of Cuban-American refugees, Venezuelan-Americans and other anti-Communist Latino voters.
His government had been reflecting on the movement of the sponsor of terrorism for months. Two senior State Department officials, who asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations, said the policy played no role in the decision to reassign Cuba and that several governments – including Obama – made political decisions about the island at the end of their presidencies. .
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Officials said the process of putting Cuba back on the list was slow and if the United States wanted to do politics, it would have reassigned Cuba before the November presidential elections, not afterwards.
The government had already signaled in May that it could restore the designation in Cuba. That was when the authorities announced that Cuba was back on a separate list of nations that did not fully cooperate with US counterterrorism efforts because of their refusal to extradite members of the National Liberation Army.
According to the State Department, terrorism sponsors are countries that “have repeatedly supported international acts of terrorism”. One official said there are legal precedents dating back to George HW Bush’s presidency to keep a country on the list for harboring terrorists, even though it is not actively supporting terrorist acts.
Cuba and the United States, enemies after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, established diplomatic relations in 2015, when Obama was president and Biden was vice president. The US has facilitated trade for five decades embargo and took other steps towards normalization, although the total end of United States restrictions required an act by Congress.
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Despite new openings and increased foreign investment since the 1990s, Cuba’s economy remains tightly controlled by the government and the military.
During Trump’s term, he opened the door to lawsuits against companies that benefit from assets confiscated by the government in Cuba, educational travel and banned cruises there and limited direct flights. Biden could act to remove Cuba from the list of terrorists, but a formal review could delay the process for several months and rekindle the debate over Cuban communist leaders.