Rick Scott warns Biden not to remove Cuba from state sponsor of terrorism list • Florida Phoenix

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Florida U.S. Sen. Rick Scott has demanded that President Biden drop any idea of removing Cuba from the list of nations the United States considers state sponsors of terrorism.

While there is no direct information indicating Biden is poised to do that, the Naples Republican said that advocates pushing the president to act before he leaves office in January are trading in “dangerous” territory.

“Calls at the 11th hour of the Biden administration from communist-sympathizers in the Democrat[ic] Party for President Biden to remove Cuba from the State Sponsor of Terrorism list are not just ignorant, but dangerous,” Scott said in a statement his office released Monday.

“The Biden-Harris administration’s years of appeasement toward the illegitimate, communist Cuban regime has fueled terrorism and instability in the Western Hemisphere and put America’s national security at unacceptable risk. Removing the Castro/Díaz-Canel regime from the State Sponsor of Terrorism list ignores the fact that it harbors terrorists, provides a secret police force to Maduro to oppress the Venezuelan people, and hosts a Chinese Communist Party spy station 90 miles from Florida,” he added.

Scott was reacting to a letter sent by 18 Democratic House members last week to Biden referencing recent widespread blackouts and escalating energy crises in Cuba to not only remove the terror designation, but also to expedite emergency humanitarian aid and technical assistance, issue safe harbor letters to address overcompliance with sanctions, suspend sanctions impeding aid, and facilitate energy infrastructure repair and modernization.

“Regardless of the Cuban government’s stance, it is imperative that the U.S. government demonstrates a willingness to aid the Cuban people directly,” a section of the letter reads. “The Cuban government’s frequent attempts to blame the U.S. for the island’s problems should not deter us from offering the assistance necessary to alleviate suffering of the Cuban people and prevent further regional destabilization.”

Four countries on list

The State Department did remove Cuba from a short list of countries that the U.S. alleges are “not cooperating fully” in its fight against terrorism in May, which some observers said could foreshadow broader review of that nation’s status, but no such announcement has occurred.

In the twilight of his first term as president, Donald Trump redesignated the communist island as a state sponsor of terrorism for “repeatedly providing support for acts of international terrorism in granting safe harbor to terrorists.”

That move took place after President Barack Obama removed Cuba from that same list in 2015, following an extensive State Department review after Obama announced he was normalizing relations with the Caribbean nation. Many of the moves by the Obama administration were rescinded by Trump, as the more than 60-year economic embargo continues against the island nation of approximately 11 million that sits 90 miles away from Key West.

Cuba is one of only four countries that the State Department has tagged with that designation, along with North Korea, Syria, and Iran.

“Being on the list of state sponsors of terrorism is not helpful to a country commercially, financially, economically, politically, or militarily,” said John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.

“It isn’t good, because generally the first results are that banks just don’t want to touch you, and they don’t want to touch any accounts that deal with you. So, you could be a U.S. company, a Spanish company, a Canadian company, and if you have legal transactions with Cuba, with travel, food & agriculture, selling vehicles — if a bank compliance department sees the word Cuba’ in a document, they could freeze the account and say, ‘Come talk to us later.’ And then for banks overseas, if they have U.S. connectivity, they don’t want to deal with you either. So, it isn’t good.”

International push

In September, nearly three dozen former world leaders, including Christina Fernández de Kirchner, the former President of Argentina, and Dilma Rousseff, former President of Brazil, wrote a letter to Biden urging him to remove Cuba from the state sponsor of terrorism list.

Perhaps the biggest move the Biden administration has taken toward advancing U.S.- Cuban policy was the announcement by the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control in late May to allow independent private sector entrepreneurs who are Cuban nationals (known as “pymes,” from the Spanish “pequeña y mediana empresa”) to open, maintain, and remotely use U.S. bank accounts for the first time.

Al Fox, founder of the Tampa-based Alliance for Responsible Cuba Policy Foundation, which advocates for normalizing Cuban-American relations, says that while it’s possible Biden could remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, it’s not likely, because Trump would likely rescind the move by executive order immediately upon taking power on Jan. 20.

“What I would tell Sen. Scott is that there’s not a scintilla of evidence that Cuba has committed an act of terrorism against the United States or anyone else,” he told the Phoenix. “The reverse is true. We have committed acts of terrorism against them.”

Jetliner bombing

Fox referred to the case of Luis Posada Carriles, the CIA-trained Cuban exile who was a suspect in the 1976 Cuban jetliner bombing that killed all 73 people on board. A November 1976 F.B.I. report obtained by the National Security Archive showed that a trusted informant had placed Posada at two meetings at which the bombing was plotted, The New York Times reported.

Posada was involved “up to his eyeballs” in planning the attack, a retired counterterrorism specialist for the FBI told the Times in 2005. Posada was tried before a military tribunal in Venezuela at the time of the attack but later acquitted. He insisted he was innocent of the bombing. (Posada died in 2018).

In placing Cuba back on the state sponsors of terrorism list, the Trump State Department said in a statement that “[f]or decades, the Cuban government has fed, housed, and provided medical care for murderers, bombmakers, and hijackers, while many Cubans go hungry, homeless, and without basic medicine.

“Members of the National Liberation Army (ELN), a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, traveled to Havana to conduct peace talks with the Colombian government in 2017. Citing peace negotiation protocols, Cuba has refused Colombia’s requests to extradite ten ELN leaders living in Havana after the group claimed responsibility for the January 2019 bombing of a Bogota police academy that killed 22 people and injured more than 87 others. Cuba also harbors several U.S. fugitives from justice wanted on or convicted of charges of political violence, many of whom have resided in Cuba for decades.”

‘Beyond irresponsible’

Hillsborough County Republican state Rep. Danny Alvarez says “it’s beyond irresponsible” for Biden to consider removing Cuba from the state sponsor of terrorism list.

“What’d I’d like to see is for him to show us the evidence that they have made any moves to rectify their atrocious record on human rights, political imprisonment, international espionage, or physically engaging with our enemies against us like China with their recent espionage base, and the fact that they allow the Russians to come into their bay and park there on a regular basis,” said Alvarez, the son of Cuban immigrants, in a phone call.

“We saw what happened when Biden reenabled Iran, that literally destabilized that entire region, and now he wants to help stabilize one of our enemies 90 miles away from our shores on his way out. For once, I would like to see Biden put America’s interests first instead of those who actively work against us. It’s clear that they have no clue why they lost the White House so resoundingly, and now he’s doubling down on his anti-American policies on his way out.”

Sen. Scott and Miami Republican U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar filed legislation at the beginning of the current Congress to prevent Biden from normalizing relations with Cuba unless freedom and democracy are restored on the island.

Who benefits?

Fox says that after 63 years of the economic embargo, it’s past time to question who benefits from those sanctions.

“There are a handful of people in Miami. They have the power, and they have the money,” he said, referring to the powerful Cuban exile community in South Florida that has been influential in shaping Cuban-American relations for generations.

“They’re very clever. They understand how the American system works better than Americans understand. And so what they did very simply is they came to the U.S. in 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, and they gave money to American politicians to write special laws that at the time only applied to Cubans. Venezuelans then took a page out of their book many years later and they did the very same thing. So, it begs the question that when you have Rick Scott and Nancy Pelosi agreeing on the policy towards Venezuela and Cuba it’s for one of two reasons: because number one, it’s the right thing to do. Or two, it is the cheapest form of politics. And that’s what this is all about.”

In their letter to Biden last week, the 18 House Democrats acknowledged that even if the president removes Cuba from the terrorism list, that executive action would be subject to reversal by the incoming presidential administration. But they insisted that “should not deter us from acting to avert further suffering and damage to United States interests.”

“Even temporary relief can save lives and permit the Cuban people a chance to insulate themselves and their families from further vulnerability. We urge your administration to act swiftly to implement these measures and mitigate the growing crisis in Cuba while advancing U.S. interests in the region,” they wrote.

Among those on the letter are New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar, and Washington’s Pamela Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

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Rick Scott warns Biden not to remove Cuba from state sponsor of terrorism list • Florida Phoenix

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