Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel asked the United States on Wednesday to remove the country from the list of nations sponsoring terrorism after Washington removed the island from the list of nations that do not cooperate in the fight against this crime.
Noting how widely known Cuba cooperates in the battle against terrorism, the United States should do the right thing and consistent with that position: to remove Cuba from the arbitrary list of the State Department and put an end to coercive economic measures that accompany it, the president stressed on his account on the social network X.
According to an announcement made by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the circumstances for Cuba’s certification as a country that does not fully cooperate with counterterrorism efforts have changed from 2022 to 2023.
The State Department document, sent to the U.S. Congress, determined under Section 40A of the Arms Export Control Act that four countries – North Korea, Iran, Syria and Venezuela – remain on this list that Washington prepares unilaterally.
Despite this recognition, the White House decided to keep Havana on the list of countries sponsoring terrorism (State Sponsors of Terrorism, SST) despite the international demand for Cuba to be removed from this list.
The U.S. government must remove Cuba from the arbitrary list with which it designates countries that supposedly sponsor terrorism and stop implementing the coercive economic measures that accompany this unfair designation. I would thus truly respond to an almost universal claim,” emphasized the island’s chancellor, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, on the X network.
Cuba was first placed on the U.S. State Department’s list of sponsors of terrorism in 1982, during the term of then-President Ronald Reagan (19812-1989).
In 2015, 33 years later, President Barack Obama (2009-2017) removed the island from the list.
Almost at the end of his presidential term, Donald Trump (2017-2021) again included Cuba on the list of countries sponsoring terrorism, after tightening the economic, commercial and financial embargo applied since 1962 with the application of 243 new sanctions aimed at the Cuban economy.
This artice has been translated after first appearing in El Pais