Pompeo weighs plan to place Cuba on U.S. terrorism sponsor list
State Department officials have drawn up a proposal to designate Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, a final-hour, foreignpolicy move that would complicate plans by the incoming Biden administration to relax increased American pressure on Havana.
With three weeks left until Inauguration Day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo must decide whether to sign off on the plan, according to two U.S. officials, a move that would also serve as a thank-you to Cuban Americans and other anti-communist Latinos in Florida who strongly supported President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans in the November election.
It is unclear whether Pompeo has decided to move ahead with the designation. But Democrats and foreign-policy experts believe that Trump and his senior officials are eager to find ways of constraining President-elect Joe Biden’s initial months in office and to make it more difficult for
Biden to reverse Trump-era policies abroad. In recent weeks, Trump officials have also sought to increase American pressure and sanctions on China and Iran.
A finding that a country has “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism,” in the State Department’s official description of a state sponsor of terrorism, automatically triggers U.S. sanctions against its government. If added to the list, Cuba would join just three other nations: Iran, North Korea and Syria.
The Biden administration could move quickly to take Cuba back off the list. But doing so would require more than the stroke of a presidential pen. The State Department would have to conduct a formal review, a process that might take several months.
A State Department spokeswoman said the agency does not discuss “deliberations or potential deliberations” regarding terrorism designations. The White House did not provide a comment.
Democrats on Tuesday assailed the Cuba proposal, criticizing what they called an eleventh-hour change that unfairly limits the incoming Biden team.
“It’s another stunt by this president with less than 23 days to go,” said Rep. Gregory W. Meeks, D-N.Y., who is the new chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The State Department
removed Cuba from its list of terrorism sponsors in 2015 after President Barack Obama announced the normalization of relations between Washington and Havana for the first time since the country’s 1959 communist revolution, which he called a relic of the Cold War.