By MCT Information Services/Miami
The US government has no plans to remove Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, US government officials said.
Opponents of US sanctions on the island’s communist government have been lobbying hard for months to remove Cuba from the state department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism as a gesture toward improved bilateral relations.
The Boston Globe reported in February that US diplomats had concluded Cuba should be taken off the list.
Another news report a month later said Cuba’s removal might be announced when the Country Report on Terrorism, also managed by the state department, is issued.
The list of state sponsors was created in 1979 and currently includes only Cuba, Iran, Syria and Sudan.
The Country Report is a totally separate, annual and country-by-country review of terror activities around the globe, including the four nations on the terror list.
There are no current efforts or plans to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors, said knowledgeable US government officials who asked for anonymity in order to speak frankly and in detail about the often confusing issue.
Inclusion on the list blocks a nation’s access to World Bank and other financing, and puts an international magnifying glass on all its international banking transactions.
The next version of the Country Report, expected to be made public in coming weeks, will certainly report that Cuba remains on the state sponsors’ list, the officials told El Nuevo Herald.
But that does not rule out the possibility that at any time in the future the US government will decide that Cuba should be removed from the state sponsors list, the officials added.
The state department is required to publish the annual Country Report at the end of each April, but it regularly misses the deadline. Last year, the report was made public in July.
The newspaper and blog The Hill in Washington, D.C., quoted a state department spokesperson as saying that the Country Report will be made public in the latter half of May.
Cuba has been on the state sponsors list since 1982. Havana also is on a separate US government list, with Venezuela and others, of countries that are not “co-operating fully with US anti-terrorism efforts.”
The Country Report in 2012 alleged Havana provides safe haven to US fugitives and members of the Basque Homeland and Liberty (ETA) in Spain and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Washington considers both as terrorist groups.
Cuba contends the ETA members are on the island with the Spanish government’s approval, but some are wanted in Madrid. Havana currently is playing host to peace talks between FARC guerrilla leaders and the Colombian government.
Florida Republican representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart recently argued that the shootdown by Cuban MiGs of two civilian Brothers to the Rescue airplanes in 1996, killing all four Miami men abroad, amounted to an act of terrorism.
Ros-Lehtinen said that the US government’s decision to keep Cuba on the state sponsors list “reaffirms that the Castro regime is, and has always been, a supporter and facilitator of terrorism.”
