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US senator criticizes Trump’s decision on Cuba

Washington, Jan 24 (Prensa Latina) US Senator Peter Welch described as very disappointing that President Donald Trump, in an executive order on his first day in office, had redesignated Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism.

“Once again, as he was during his first term, he (Trump) was pressured by the same noisy minority that believes that by making the life of the Cuban people as miserable as possible they will overthrow the government,” the Democrat from Vermont warned.

Welch stated, “Our policy of sanctions, isolation and hostility has undoubtedly contributed to the daily hardships suffered by the Cuban people.”

Cuba does not belong to the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT), and “by putting it back on that list, the president has ignored the law,” the senator stressed at a recent legislative session of the Upper House.

He recalled that in his last week in office, President Joe Biden removed Cuba from the SSOT list, a designation imposed by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the final days of the first Trump administration (2017-2021).

That designation has caused, directly and indirectly, great difficulties for the Cuban people, he said, adding that Biden “correctly determined that there is no evidence that Cuba sponsors international terrorism.”

However, the reaction of those who have supported the terrorism designation was predictable, he pointed out, and “when he was asked whether Cuba is a sponsor of terrorism, incumbent Secretary of State Marco Rubio replied, ‘Without a doubt.’”

Welch stressed that “if the facts and the law supported that claim, I would agree, but the designation has become a transparently political determination, not based on facts or law.”

Those who even claim that Cuba belongs on the SSOT list “have not been able to present any evidence that it supports acts of international terrorism,” he warned.

On January 14, already at the end of his term, Biden took a late but in the right direction step by taking some measures regarding Cuba, including the exclusion from that unilateral list.

During his first administration, Trump implemented a policy of maximum pressure on Cuba and adopted 243 additional measures that reinforced the blockade.

On January 12, 2021, eight days before leaving the White House, the Republican president returned Cuba to the SSOT list, which it had not been part of since 2015, when Cuba was removed by then-President Barack Obama.

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