US May Remove Cuba From State Terrorism Blacklist, Obama Likely To Meet Castro On Friday

The United States may remove Cuba from the list of nations which it accuses of sponsoring terrorism. The U.S. State Department is considering the idea while President Barack Obama is all set to meet Cuban President Raul Castro at the Summit of the Americas starting on Friday.

The U.S. president asked for a review after he had announced a diplomatic patch up with Cuba on Dec. 17. It will be a step further to end the estrangement which has continued for more than five decades between the countries. Obama is going to leave for a trip to Jamaica on Wednesday. He will then move to Panama to attend the summit where he is expected to meet the Cuban president.

According to reports, the U.S. State Department may send its conclusions to the president and recommend Cuba to be removed from the blacklist. The communist-led country has long been asking for the removal so that diplomatic relations can be restored.

Cuba’s inclusion in the U.S. list has been an obstacle to the development of the bilateral ties between Cuba and the United States. Cuba was included in the blacklist in 1982. The inclusion coincided with Cuba’s alleged efforts to aid Marxist insurgencies in countries like Colombia. Other countries in the list include Syria, Sudan and Syria.

According to White House officials, the U.S. president is certain to interact with his Cuban counterpart at the summit. Obama attended the summit for the first time in 2009, and the experience was not quite pleasant. He was strongly criticised for shaking hands with the late Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez with a smile.

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American, said that Obama was going to make a major foreign policy error by trying to make peace with Cuba. “President Obama’s Cuba policy and his support for Raul Castro’s participation in this summit have sent the wrong kind of message to the rest of the hemisphere that being democratic and respecting human rights are negotiable and no longer prerequisites for participating in this forum,” Rubio said.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest earlier said that the decision of removing Cuba from the blacklist might take only a day or two more. He said that the U.S. State Department was expected to move ahead “relatively soon.”

Contact the writer: s.mukhopadhyay@ibtimes.com.au