WASHINGTON -- The U.S. is considering removing Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism in a review that is a "separate process" from talks between the two nations on normalizing diplomatic relations, Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday.
"That evaluation will be made appropriately, and nothing will be done with respect to the list until the evaluation is completed," he said.
While Cuba has been on the list of state sponsors of terrorism since 1982, the restrictions have taken on new significance since President Barack Obama and Cuba's President Raul Castro announced plans in December to normalize relations between their countries.
Obama has ordered the State Department to review Cuba's inclusion on the list, where it is one of four nations remaining. The others are Iran, Sudan and Syria. The State Department and intelligence agencies are reviewing evidence, and officials have said they expect to send a recommendation to the White House in coming weeks.
"It would be difficult to explain that diplomatic ties were restored while Cuba continues, unjustly, on the list of state sponsors of terrorism," Josefina Vidal, who is leading Cuba's delegation in talks on normalization, said during the first round of discussions in Havana in January.
Being on the terrorist list has barred the Cuban government from access to banks in the U.S. and has made banks in other countries that have branches in the U.S. wary of doing any business with the Cubans because of the risk of being fined by U.S. authorities.
Last year, French banking giant BNP Paribas admitted to hiding the names of Cuban, Iranian and Sudanese clients when sending transactions through the U.S. banking system and was fined a record $8.9 billion by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The Cuban Interests Section, which represents the country in Washington, does its business in cash -- including issuing visas and paying utility bills -- because no bank, U.S. or foreign, has been willing to assume the risk to take it on as a client since M&T Bank Corp. announced it was canceling the Cuban mission's account in 2013.
In one sign of change, MasterCard said last month that it will lift a block on U.S. bank-card transactions in Cuba after receiving guidance from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control.
According to the State Department's 2013 Country Reports on Terrorism, "there was no indication that the Cuban government provided weapons or paramilitary training to terrorist groups."
It was the third consecutive year the department made that judgment, contributing to criticism that the listing persists because of domestic political opposition in states such as Florida to improving relations with the Castro regime.
Ricardo Herrero, executive director of #CubaNow, a Miami-based policy group that supports the normalization of relations with Cuba, said the only two reasons why countries are kept on the U.S. terrorism list are "findings by the State Department and politics."
Cuba has remained on the list on the grounds that it has provided a haven to fugitives from American justice as well as members of ETA, the Basque separatist group, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, which is engaged in peace talks with the Colombian government in Havana.
Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., an opponent of Obama's policy changes, sent an open letter to Kerry on Thursday demanding action on the return of fugitives from U.S. justice, including a woman accused of killing a New Jersey state trooper.
"The Castro regime has a long track record of providing sanctuary to terrorists and harboring U.S. fugitives who have murdered American citizens, while undermining international security," Menendez said in a statement.
The State Department's 2013 report found that "Cuba's ties to ETA have become more distant, and that about eight of the two dozen ETA members in Cuba were relocated with the cooperation of the Spanish government."
Cuba also has supported and hosted negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC aimed at brokering a peace agreement, talks to which the U.S. named a special envoy last week.
The ETA, which is accused of killing more than 800 people in its separatist struggle since 1968, declared "a definitive cessation of its armed activity" in 2011, and the next year said it was ready to negotiate an end to its operations.
Information for this article was contributed by Terry Atlas of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 02/28/2015