The White House announced Tuesday that President Obama intends to remove Cuba from the US government’s list of nations that sponsor terrorism, eliminating a major obstacle to the restoration of diplomatic relations after decades of hostilities.
The decision, which represents a crucial step in Obama’s effort to turn the page on a Cold War-era dispute, came after a much-anticipated meeting Saturday between Obama and President Raul Castro of Cuba on the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas in Panama City, the first such formal session between leaders of the countries in more than a half-century.
For more than 30 years, Cuba has been on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, along with Iran, Sudan, and Syria.
Cuba’s place on the list has long snarled its access to financial markets, and, more recently, emerged as a sticking point in negotiations to reopen embassies that have officially been closed since 1961.
Obama ordered a review of Cuba’s status in December, when he and Castro agreed to move toward normal relations.
White House officials said Tuesday that Obama had approved a recommendation by Secretary of State John F. Kerry to take Cuba off the terrorism list after the review of its record and assurances from Havana that it would not support terrorism in the future.
“We will continue to have differences with the Cuban government, but our concerns over a wide range of Cuba’s policies and actions fall outside the criteria that is relevant to whether to rescind Cuba’s designation” as a state sponsor of terrorism, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in a statement.
Earnest said the president would continue to “support our interests and values through engagement with the Cuban government and people.”
The State Department determined that Cuba had not engaged in terrorist activity in the past six months, criterion for the designation.
Washington’s isolation of Cuba, particularly through its trade embargo, has been a perennial source of hostility in Latin America, uniting governments across the region regardless of their ideologies.
Even some of Washington’s close allies in the Americas have rallied to Cuba’s side, sometimes making it hard to gain traction on other, unrelated issues, officials have said.
Cuba was attending the regional summit for the first time since its inception in 1994.
The meeting created the first publicly planned encounter of the American and Cuban presidents since 1958, though Obama and Castro shook hands in greeting at Nelson Mandela’s funeral in South Africa in 2013, and President Bill Clinton and Fidel Castro, Raul’s brother and predecessor, shook hands and chatted briefly at a United Nations event in 2000.
To many, the decision to remove Cuba from the list affirmed the obvious. When Obama announced he would seek normal ties with Cuba, he expressed doubt the island nation belonged on the list.
Last week, Obama appeared to be sharpening his defense of removing Cuba’s designation, telling NPR that it involves a “straightforward” evaluation of whether a country is a state sponsor of terrorism, “not do we agree with them on everything, not whether they engage in repressive or authoritarian activities in their own country.”
Analysts said Cuba’s designation had more to do with politics than any terrorist activity. Even before the decision was announced, critics attacked it.
“The banks involved in or contemplating doing business with Cuba have an enormous compliance burden that does not justify the costs,” said Antonio C. Martinez II, a New York lawyer whose practice includes the regulations surrounding Cuban assets. “That is why no bank wanted” to have accounts with Cuban diplomats in the United States, complicating efforts to reopen an embassy.
State Department officials said they had embarked on a thorough review to ensure that their decision could stand up to any questioning in a Republican-controlled Congress, where there are fierce objections.
Cuba would not come off the list until after a 45-day review period, during which a joint resolution to block its removal could be considered in the House and Senate. The idea of removing Cuba’s terrorism designation has been met with considerable resistance from Republicans, including many Cuban-American lawmakers.
US Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from Florida, previously stated that Cuba’s expected removal from the list “would be nothing short of a miscarriage of justice borne out of political motivations not rooted in reality.”