President Joe Biden removed Cuba from the list of nations that support violence in a last-minute walk before he leaves office the following year, lifted sanctions on businesses run by Cuba’s defense, and once more suspended a clause in a law that allows Cuban Americans to get compensation for confiscated home on the island.
A senior administration official said Biden called reporters on Tuesday to tell Congress that the State Department had been removing Cuba from the roster of terrorism-sponsors. The White House was likewise “rescinding” a 2017 Trump-era document that was the foundation of a plan to impose restrictions on the Caribbean defense and its multiheaded company, GAESA, that controls much of the region’s economy, including commerce.
The official stated that” the main effect of this deferral is that it would eliminate the so-called restricted list” without pleading that the record, which is now hosted by the State Department, only includes businesses that are under the control of GAESA.
The official claimed that President Biden is also halting Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, which enables American to bring legal action against a business if the Cuban government has seized its home without payment. Since Bill Clinton signed the bill in 1996, every U.S. senator has revoked the clause, which he has done since. President Donald Trump has done so in 2019.
The three steps announced Tuesday were described as “unilateral” steps taken by President Biden as a “gesture of could” to promote a bargain mediated by the Catholic Church that may lead to the discharge of Cuban political prisoners, including people who took part in the island-wide July 11, 2021, demonstrations, a senior administration official told reporters.
According to the official,” We know that the Catholic Church has significantly advanced an agreement with Cuba that will allow the humanitarian release of a significant number of political prisoners in Cuba and those who have been detained unfairly,” the official said.
The Cuban government has engaged “directly in dialogue” with the Catholic Church, the official said, but did not explain if the U. S. has participated in the exchanges. Additionally, he did not specify how many prisoners were scheduled to be released or when.
” Today’s actions demonstrate that President Biden’s Cuban policy, which is focused on achieving practical results with respect to human rights in Cuba, will pay dividends for the Cuban people”, he said.
But Tuesday’s measures are likely to be short-lived: The incoming Trump administration is packed with Cuba hardliners, including the likely next secretary of state, Florida U. S. Sen. Marco Rubio, who was personally involved in shaping some of the policies that were undone Tuesday— in particular the sanctions against the Cuban military.
In one of the final policy choices made by the Trump administration in 2020, Cuba was listed as a sponsor of terrorism, citing Cuba’s hostility of Colombian terrorists and Americans fleeing justice.
The Cuban government claims that the inclusion on the list has made it more difficult to access the international banking system and has contributed to the island’s declining economic situation. Havana had been actively using a campaign to remove itself from the blacklist, including enlisting regional leaders like Colombia’s Gustavo Petro and former Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to lobby President Joe Biden on their behalf.
Other former left-leaning presidents from the Americas and Spain, former U.S. diplomats and advisers to former president Barack Obama, and Democratic lawmakers who support engagement with the Cuban government urged Biden to remove Cuba from the list to ease the humanitarian suffering of the population and stop the migration that has reached historic proportions.
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