Just nine days before Republican President Donald Trump leaves office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo It was reported that Cuba was placed on the protection list of American fugitives and Colombian rebel leaders. The head of US diplomacy also stated that Havana supports Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, which has allowed him – according to his assessment – to remain in power.
“With this act, we will hold the Cuban government accountable once again and send a clear message that the Castro regime must stop supporting international terrorism and sabotaging American justice,” Pompeo said in a statement.
Cuba’s return to the list is another step in the current administration’s shift away The warming of relations between Washington and Havana during the reign of Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama. Obama’s decision to officially remove Cuba, an enemy of the Cold War, from the list of state sponsors of terrorism was an important step toward restoring diplomatic relations in 2015.
As Reuters notes, a return to normalization of diplomatic relations with Havana will require extensive legal work and may complicate Biden’s plans. The campaign democrat stated that he was quick to change Trump’s policy toward Havana, which he said had “offended Cubans and did nothing to support democracy and human rights.”
After Trump came to power in 2017, he tightened his path towards Cuba, introducing, among other things, travel restrictions to the United States and money transfers to a Caribbean island. This policy made him popular with the Cuban-American population of South Florida.
The head of Cuban diplomacy, Bruno Rodriguez, referred to the activities of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “We condemn the United States, which declared the hypocrisy and cynicism that Cuba is a state sponsor of terrorism,” he wrote on Twitter.
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