President Barack Obama told Congress on Tuesday that he is removing Cuba from a list of state sponsors of terrorism, the latest action in his drive to normalize relations with the island but one that paves the way for a showdown with Congress.
Obama said Cuba has not provided any support for international terrorism in the past six months and has given him assurances that it will not do so in the future, the two conditions necessary for a country to be removed from the list, which also includes Iran, Sudan and Syria. President George W. Bush removed North Korea from the list in 2008 in a failed effort to get that country to give up its nuclear program.
Congress now has 45 days to override the move or to do nothing and allow it to proceed. Even if Congress takes action against Obama’s decision, he could veto it.
U.S. officials declined to specify when they believe Cuba last sponsored or assisted an act of terrorism. The substance of a State Department review, which was delivered to Obama last week, remains secret.
Obama telegraphed the move over the weekend at a summit in Panama, where he sat down for an hour with Cuban leader Raúl Castro, the first such meeting between the nations’ leaders in more than half a century. But while taking Cuba off the terror list carries heavy symbolic value, its practical impact may not be great.
Cuba remains under a U.S. economic embargo, and efforts to lift that embargo are gaining little traction in the Republican-controlled Senate and House of Representatives. A series of Cuba-specific sanctions imposed by the Treasury Department over the years also remain in effect.
Obama ordered the State Department to review Cuba’s presence on the terrorism list – where it had been placed in 1982 – on Dec. 17, when he and Castro announced plans to normalize relations, which were severed in 1961.
“As the president has said, 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.
Tuesday’s action brought condemnation from many Republicans and support from Democrats and some in the business community.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who Monday made his run for the presidency official, called Obama’s decision “terrible” and said Cuba remains a state sponsor of terrorism, accusing it of harboring U.S. fugitives and helping North Korea evade United Nations weapons sanctions.
He said its removal “sends a chilling message to our enemies abroad that this White House is no longer serious about calling terrorism by its proper name.”
That sparked a quick retort from the Democratic National Committee, with spokesman Mo Elleithee saying, “For a guy who just yesterday said he wanted to be a new leader and usher in a new American century, it sure sounds like Marco Rubio is clinging to an outdated foreign policy relic from the Cold War.”
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is likely to announce a presidential run, said Obama “embraced Cuba’s oppressive dictator” by removing Cuba from the list, “consummating the Obama administration’s rapprochement with the communist police state.”
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, another Republican presidential candidate, whose father is Cuban, called the action “dangerous and reckless” and said Cuba “continues to support and harbor terrorists who have murdered Americans.”
Whether the action would affect the timetable for re-establishing embassies in Havana and Washington was unclear. The two nations have held three rounds of talks to discuss issues related to that goal but sticking points remain, including how many diplomats would be authorized for each embassy and whether Cuba can offer assurances of freedom of movement for U.S. diplomats around the island.
A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity under rules imposed by the White House, said Tuesday that new talks between the two sides last weekend in Panama “were really pretty productive,” but Secretary of State John Kerry remains cautious.
“He wants to get this right, not necessarily fast,” the official said.
That means haggling over the replacement of obsolete equipment and facilities, debating which agencies are allowed entry, and fixing staffing levels for both sides, the official said, so that each of the diplomatic missions can operate adequately.
“It might not function the way an embassy functions in London, but it’s got to function at a level the way some of our embassies do in other countries,” the official said.
Another senior administration official, also speaking on terms of anonymity, said economic sanctions would remain in effect and most transactions with Cuba and with Cuban nationals and the government of Cuba would remain prohibited, absent authorization from the Treasury Department and its Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Still, the chokehold on Cuba appeared to be lessening. After more than a year of operating on a cash basis after M&T Bank closed its Cuba accounts, the island nation’s diplomatic mission at the United Nations and its interest section in Washington appear close to establishing a new banking arrangement, the official said.
“We believe that the Cubans have found a bank and are very close to resolving this,” the official said.
Removal from the list is also a first step toward Cuba’s gaining “much-needed access” to financial markets and having representation in multilateral financial institutions, said Jason Marczak, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.
But there are a number of hurdles along that path, including U.S. sanctions that “prevent the U.S. from voting for Cuba’s ascension into international financial institutions,” Marczak said. Congress would have to vote to lift them.
In its 2013 terrorism report, the State Department concentrated most of its attention on the activities of al Qaida and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and devoted only a short section to Cuba, noting that “Cuba has long provided safe haven to members of Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).”
But the report also noted that Cuba had hosted and supported peace negotiations between the FARC and the Colombian government and said Cuba’s ties to ETA, which is blamed for more than 800 deaths in its push for independence for Spain’s Basque region, have become more distant.
Opponents of removing Cuba from the terrorism list, however, have made much of two clandestine weapons shipments.
In 2013, a North Korean freighter coming from Cuba and about to transit the Panama Canal was found to be transporting two MIG-21 jets and other undeclared war materiel under sacks of brown sugar. The North Korean shipping company that carried the cargo was sanctioned by the United Nations for violating restrictions on trafficking of weapons systems but Cuba was not.
Last month, a Hong Kong-registered vessel headed to Cuba carrying an unregistered cargo of ammunition and gunpowder was impounded in the Colombian port of Cartagena and the captain ordered arrested. China has insisted it was part of normal trade.
The report also mentioned that the Cuban government continues to harbor fugitives wanted in the United States and provides support for them, but it did not specify how many fugitives or name them.
Cuba acknowledges that it has granted political asylum to a small number of U.S. fugitives, including JoAnne Chesimard, a member of the Black Liberation Army who is known as Assata Shakur. On the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists, she was convicted in the 1973 murder of a New Jersey state trooper and fled to Cuba after a jailbreak.
Also believed to be living in Cuba is William Morales, a Puerto Rican separatist and bomb maker who was convicted and sentenced to 99 years in connection with a 1975 blast that killed four people. He escaped from a New York prison ward in 1979 and lived in Mexico before heading to Cuba.
Cuba has said that the United States also harbors fugitives from Cuban justice such as Luis Posada Carriles, who has been accused of plotting the 1976 bombing of a Cubana airliner in which 73 people lost their lives.