(Washington) A senior Cuban diplomat met with American officials this week in Washington, without significant progress on Cuba’s demand to be removed from the list of countries supporting terrorism, we learned Thursday from diplomatic sources in the two countries.
Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio met with senior officials responsible for Latin America at the State Department, Brian Nichols, and at the White House, Juan Gonzalez, according to these sources.
These meetings come as Cuba hosts on Friday a two-day summit of the G77 + China, a group formed by around a hundred countries from Asia, Africa and Latin America, with the objective of promoting a less ” unjust.”
These are rare discussions at this level of representation between the United States and Cuba, even if Washington and Havana have regular dialogue on migration issues and against international crime.
Former US President Donald Trump ended the open policy towards Cuba initiated by his predecessor Barack Obama, and put the country back on his blacklist of states supporting terrorism in January 2021 alongside Iran, North Korea and Syria.
Upon his arrival at the White House in 2021, President Joe Biden promised to review US policy towards Cuba, but his rhetoric hardened following the repression of anti-government protests on the island in July 2021 .
Since 1962, the United States has also imposed a commercial and financial embargo on Cuba, mired in its worst economic crisis in thirty years.
Havana has made removing the blacklist a priority and deplores the lack of progress in discussions and the lack of political will from the Biden administration in the run-up to the US presidential election in November 2024, according to a Cuban official who did not wish to be identified.
According to State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, the Cuban vice minister met with Nichols on Monday, and the two officials discussed “human rights, immigration and other issues of concern.” bilateral interest.
“We have not made any decision that I can announce today,” he told reporters about Cuba’s removal from the blacklist.
Last March, the head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken indicated to Congress that the United States was not ready to do so, stressing that Havana had not taken sufficient measures in this regard.