The Obama 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 President Obama’s push to thaw relations between the United States and the island nation.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry rescinded Cuba’s designation as a terrorism sponsor at the end of a 45-day congressional notification period, which began on April 14 when Mr. Obama announced his intention to remove Cuba from the list.
The move “reflects our assessment that Cuba meets the statutory criteria for rescission,” Jeff Rathke, the State Department spokesman, said in a statement.
“While the United States has significant concerns and disagreements with a wide range of Cuba’s policies and actions,” Mr. Rathke said, “these fall outside the criteria relevant to the rescission of a State Sponsor of Terrorism designation.”The action comes amid signs of difficulty in the negotiations between American and Cuban officials to bring about the historic reopening Mr. Obama announced in December. Despite widespread optimism, officials failed last week to reach an accord on re-establishing diplomatic relations and opening embassies.
The action comes amid signs of difficulty in the negotiations between American and Cuban officials to bring about the historic reopening Mr. Obama announced in December. Despite widespread optimism, officials failed last week to reach an accord on re-establishing diplomatic relations and opening embassies.
Still, Cuba’s removal from the list – now confined to Iran, Sudan and Syria – is an important step in Mr. 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 President Raúl Castro of Cuba 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, in effect since 1982 when their government was backing leftist insurgencies, as a blemish on their image and a practical hindrance that had hampered their ability to gain access to American banks.
Mr. Obama asked the State Department to review Cuba’s designation late last year, when he and Mr. Castro announced they would work to re-establish ties. A State Department review concluded last month that Cuba no longer deserved to be on the list. It said that the nation had not sponsored international terrorism recently and that it had promised not to do so.
Cuban-Americans in Congress who initially vowed to try and block the change in designation quickly said they had concluded they had no legal means of doing so, and made no attempts to oppose it.
Even with the issue of the terrorism list now resolved, American 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.
United States negotiators want assurances from the Cubans that American diplomats at a new embassy in Havana would be able to move freely around the country and speak with whomever they wished, including opponents of the government. Cuban officials, who have frequently charged that the United States was working to undermine the government by helping dissidents, have resisted the request.
Americans have also sought guarantees that Cubans visiting an American embassy in Havana would not be harassed by the police.
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,” said Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary.
