Cuba now off list as terrorism promoter

Step seen as key in mending ties

An aerial view shows the coastal skyline of Havana, including the U.S. Interests Section diplomatic mission, the third building from the right, along the shore.
An aerial view shows the coastal skyline of Havana, including the U.S. Interests Section diplomatic mission, the third building from the right, along the shore.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's administration on Friday removed Cuba from a list of state sponsors of terrorism, a crucial step in normalizing ties between Washington and Havana and the latest progress in the White House's push to thaw relations between the United States and the island nation.

Secretary of State John Kerry rescinded Cuba's designation as a terrorism sponsor at the end of a 45-day congressional notification period, which began April 14 when Obama announced his intention to remove Cuba from the list.

The move "reflects our assessment that Cuba meets the statutory criteria for rescission," State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said in a statement.

"While the United States has significant concerns and disagreements with a wide range of Cuba's policies and actions," Rathke said, "these fall outside the criteria relevant to the rescission of a State Sponsor of Terrorism designation."

In a blog post, the White House called the decision on the terrorism list another step toward improving relations with Cuba.

"For 55 years, we tried using isolation to bring about change in Cuba," it said. "But by isolating Cuba from the United States, we isolated the United States from the Cuban people and, increasingly, the rest of the world."

The two nations intend to reopen embassies in Havana and Washington once officials resolve points of contention, including U.S. demands for freedom of movement for its diplomats in the island nation and Cuba's concerns about U.S. democracy programs that it says undermine the government in Havana.

"It's hard to put a timeline on it," Rathke told reporters at the State Department. "We've gotten closer each time," he said of continuing U.S.-Cuba talks.

Still, Cuba's removal from the list -- now comprising only Iran, Sudan and Syria -- is an important step in Obama's effort to move past the Cold War-era hostility that long marked the relationship between the United States and Cuba. The president met with Cuban President Raul Castro last month in Panama at the Summit of the Americas in the first such encounter in a half-century.

Cubans saw their nation's designation as a sponsor of terrorism, effected in 1982 by President Ronald Reagan when Cuba's government was backing leftist insurgencies, as a blemish on their image and a practical hindrance that had hampered their ability to gain access to U.S. banks.

Obama asked the State Department to review Cuba's designation late last year, when he and Castro announced they would work to re-establish ties.

A State Department review determined last month that Cuba no longer deserved to be on the list. It said the nation had not sponsored international terrorism recently and that it had promised not to do so. Cuba had insisted since the first talks in Havana in January that it never belonged on the terrorism list and would have to be removed before it would agree to restore ties and reopen embassies.

In Congress, leaders of the Republicans-controlled House have shown zero interest in repealing the laws from the 1990s that codified the U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in an emailed statement that "the Obama administration has handed the Castro regime a significant political win in return for nothing."

"The communist dictatorship has offered no assurances it will address its long record of repression and human rights abuses at home," he said.

"Nor has it offered any indication it will cease its support for violence throughout the region."

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said the decision was a mistake and called it "further evidence that President Obama seems more interested in capitulating to our adversaries than in confronting them."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., meanwhile, praised the move, saying it is a "critical step forward in creating new opportunities for American businesses and entrepreneurs, and in strengthening family ties."

While U.S. lawmakers opposed to normalizing relations with Cuba can't stop Obama from upgrading the U.S. Interests Section in Havana to an embassy, they are able to try to block or delay the nomination of an ambassador to serve there.

Removal from the terrorism list doesn't affect the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, which can't be lifted without action by Congress. Boehner vowed that the House will make sure the sanctions remain in place.

Even with the issue of the terrorism list now resolved, U.S. and Cuban officials face challenges in pressing forward with the rapprochement. Talks last week, the fourth round since the normalization process was announced, broke off without resolution of a checklist of issues standing in the way of converting the diplomatic outposts known as "interests sections" into full-fledged embassies.

U.S. negotiators want assurances from the Cubans that U.S. diplomats at a new embassy in Havana would be able to move freely about the country and speak with whomever they wished, including opponents of the government. Cuban officials, who have frequently said the United States was working to undermine the government by helping dissidents, have resisted the request.

The U.S. also has sought guarantees that Cubans visiting a U.S. embassy in Havana would not be harassed by the police.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Friday that "there continue to be issues that need to be worked out." He said important progress had been made, but would not give a time frame for an announcement. "That's obviously among the next milestones," he said.

But the White House has remained publicly upbeat about the prospects of bridging the divides and reaching a point where it would be possible for the president to visit Havana before he leaves office.

"I know that there's one person in particular that hopes President Obama will be in Havana at some point in the relatively recent future, and that's President Obama himself," Earnest said.

Information for this article was contributed by Julie Hirschfeld Davis of The New York Times; by Indira A.R. Lakshmanan and Nicole Gaouette of Bloomberg News; and by Andrea Rodriguez, Matthew Lee, Anne-Marie Garcia and Ken Sweet of The Associated Press.

A Section on 05/30/2015

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