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In a conference scheduled for Thursday in Washington, three pro-normalization organizations will be urging the Obama Administration to remove Cuba from the State Department’s List of State Sponsors of Terrorism.
The mechanism, in place since the late 1970s, makes a normalization of trade and investment between the United States and Cuba impossible.
“There is no evidence that would place” Cuba on the list, the Latin America Working Group and Center for International Policy said in an invitation to the public event. “One need only read this year’s State Department report on the subject to draw that conclusion. The report, in fact, begins by saying that ‘the Government of Cuba maintained a public stance against terrorism and terrorist financing in 2010′. And it provides no evidence that the government violated that stance.”
The event will feature Mavis Anderson of the Latin America Working Group introducing the speakers. Wayne Smith, of the Center for International Policy, will discuss the history of the list and how Cuba could be removed from it. Washington attorney Robert Muse will describe how the list opens the way to court judgments against Cuba, now totaling billions of dollars, eventually creating perhaps an insurmountable obstacle to renewed trade relations. Carlos Alzugaray, a professor at the University of Havana’s Center for the Study of the U.S., now lecturing at Queens College in New York City, will point out that the list came out in a Cold-War context which no longer exists. Sarah Stephens of the Center for Democracy in the Americas will discuss how keeping Cuba on the list reflects the U.S. policy to suffocate Cuba economically. Arturo López Levy, now a lecturer at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and formerly a Secretary of the Bnai Brith of the Cuban Jewish Community, will point out that Cuba’s inclusion on the list is based on bogus allegations that undermine the credibility of the whole mechanism.
