WASHINGTON – The Department of Foreign Affairs on Monday named Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism in a last-minute foreign policy that will hamper the incoming Biden government’s plans to restore friendlier relations with Havana.
In a statement, Foreign Minister Mike Pompeo cited Cuba’s host of ten Colombian rebel leaders, along with a handful of U.S. refugees sought for crimes committed in the 1970s, and Cuba’s support for the authoritarian leader. of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.
Mr. Pompeo said the action sent the message that “the Castro regime must end its support for international terrorism and the undermining of American justice.”
The New York Times reported last month that Mr. Pompeo weighs the move and has a plan to do it on his desk.
The action, announced with only a few days left in the Trump administration, reverses a step taken in 2015 after President Barack Obama restored diplomatic relations with Cuba, calling his decades of political and economic isolation a remnant of the Cold War.
President Trump acted swiftly to undermine Obama’s policy of openness, to the delight of Cuban Americans and other Latino voters in Florida who welcomed his aggressive stance toward Havana and his socialist, anti-American ally, Maduro. .
Other Republicans called Mr. Trump applauded, saying that Havana had failed to enforce political reforms, and that differences of opinion were still fueling the struggle and breaking the promises he made to the Obama administration.
U.S. officials said the plan to put Cuba on the list of terrorist citizens was developed in a breach of the standard process by the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs and not the Bureau of Terrorism, which usually plays a central role in such would make a decision. .
Monday’s statement said Cuba “repeatedly supported acts of international terrorism”, according to the Foreign Ministry’s criteria for adding countries to the list, which includes only three other countries: Iran, North Korea and Syria .
The move automatically leads to US sanctions against Cuba – which is likely to have an insignificant effect, experts said, given the scale of current US fines against Havana.
But the move could be a symbolic deterrent to businesses, adding another one among many discouraging opportunities to export, import or provide services to Cuba, ‘said John Kavulich, President of the US Department of Commerce. – and economic council of Cuba, said.
Pompeo’s statement states that Cuba’s refusal to extradite 10 leaders of Colombia’s National Liberation Army has also designated a foreign terrorist organization that has been living in Havana since 2017. The leaders traveled to Havana in 2017 for peace talks that offered Cuba to end a long-running uprising in Colombia, and did not return home.
The National Liberation Army claimed responsibility for a bomb attack on a Bogotá police academy in January 2019 that killed 22 people and injured more than 87 others.
Mr. Pompeo also cites the presence in Cuba of three refugees charged or convicted of murder in the early 1970s, including Joanne D. Chesimard (73), a former member of the Black Liberation Army now named Assata Shakur, and who remains on the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists for the assassination of a state troop in New Jersey in 1973.
His statement also said that the Cuban government was “acting maliciously throughout the region”, and that its intelligence and security services were “helping Nicolás Maduro maintain his stranglehold on his people while operating terrorist organizations.” the Cuban government supported Colombian rebels outside its borders and that its assistance to Mr. Maduro helped create a “permissive environment for international terrorists to live and prosper within Venezuela”.
On the campaign, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. spoke of a return to Obama’s more open approach to Havana, and vowed to immediately halt the failed Trump policy that harmed the Cuban people and did nothing to move forward. democracy and human rights. ”
Although the government can remove Biden Cuba from the terrorist list, it will need a review process that could take months.
Ted A. Henken, associate professor of sociology at Baruch College in New York, calls the term “a symbolic final gesture” by the Trump administration to Cuba, as well as a reward for the Cuban exile community and like-minded Latin voters who have in November appeared surprisingly strong numbers for the president.
“It’s unfair on the basis of the merits or evidence,” he said. “Cuba is a dictatorship that systematically denies its citizens, but has not been shown to engage in terrorist activities.”
“The designation is politically motivated for a local public in the US,” he added.
William LeoGrande, a professor of government at the American University in Washington, noted that Mr. Trump’s numerous sanctions against Cuba mean that the new name would have little additional effect.
For the past two years, Cuba has been subject to the most severe sanctions by the United States for the past 50 years, which has contributed to rationing and deep shortages of basic necessities such as medicine and food. According to Alejandro Gil, Cuba’s Minister of Economy, his economy shrank by 11 percent last year.
Mr. LeoGrande said the designation could hamper legal financial transactions involving U.S. financial institutions, such as U.S. airlines paying the Cuban government for landing fees, as banks continue to oversee such exchanges from Washington.
Banking transactions by third countries may also be affected. During the period of mr. Trump has increasingly made European banks reluctant to issue payments to Cuban state-owned enterprises. The designation of the island’s terrorism could further reduce the risk appetite.
Mr LeoGrande said the Cuban government would try to avoid escalating the conflict, with the prospect of Biden will try to improve relations.
In the streets of Havana, the news received anger. “It’s a lie,” said Sergio Herrera, 45, a bicycle taxi driver.
“Trump politically has his neck in a loop, and ‘is looking for excuses,'” he said.
Michael Crowley reports from Washington, Ed Augustin from Havana and Kirk Semple from Mexico City.