Rubio says Cuba belongs
on terrorism list
The US secretary of state-designate says the incoming Trump administration won’t be bound by Joe Biden’s policies.
kt comments: This is terrible, indicating American foreign policies won't be reliable as those would change with any change of internal political party in ruling power. A very bad indication for future unstable inconsistent US foreign policies
The Biden administration said it was removing Cuba from the blacklist, which severely impedes investment, as part of a deal in which the communist island will free more than 550 jailed protesters.
Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants vociferously opposed to Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, said President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, which takes over Monday, is not bound to Biden policies.
“There is zero doubt in my mind that they meet all the qualifications for being a state sponsor of terrorism,” Rubio told his senate confirmation hearing, without explicitly saying he would reverse the move.
Trump similarly put Cuba back on the blacklist days before handing over to Biden in 2021. His then secretary of state Mike Pompeo pointed to Cuba’s refusal to extradite back to Colombia members of the militant group ELN.
Colombia since has elected a leftist president, Gustavo Petro, who dropped the arrest warrants as part of a peace push.
Rubio said that another Colombian guerrilla group, FARC, “has had the full support of the Cuban regime throughout its entire existence” and that Cuba has been “openly friendly” toward Palestinian militants Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, both designated by Washington as terrorist groups.
“We know as well that the Cuban regime, for example, hosts not one but two countries’ espionage stations within their national territory, 90 miles from the shores of the US,” Rubio said.
Trump in his last term undid much of a reconciliation drive by former president Barack Obama, who had described as a failure the more than half century of isolation imposed on the island by the US.
The US only lists three other countries as state sponsors of terrorism – Iran, North Korea and Syria – and is expected to reassess Syria after the toppling of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad.
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