US PRESIDENT Barack Obama removed Cuba from Washington’s “state sponsors of terrorism” list on Tuesday night, paving the way for relations to be normalised.

Cubans welcomed the decision — while emphasising that the country’s inclusion on the controversial list had always been absurd.

“The Cuban government recognises the just decision to take Cuba off a list on which it should never have been included,” diplomat Josefina Vidal said.

Senior US security adviser Ben Rhodes appeared to agree, tweeting: “Put simply, [Obama] is acting to remove Cuba from the state sponsor of terrorism list because Cuba is not a state sponsor of terrorism.”

The common-sense decision was even welcomed by many Republicans, with Arizona Senator Jeff Flake tweeting:
“Good move. The list should mean something.”

Washington slapped the terrorist label on Cuba in 1982, at a time when US agents were arming, training and even fighting alongside the terrorist Contra insurgency seeking to topple Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.

It has remained a stick for beating the US’s political enemies rather than a description of real state behaviour ever since.

When Cuba is formally removed from the list — which should take effect 45 days from Mr Obama’s message to

Congress announcing the decision — it will include Iran, Sudan and Syria, but not Saudi Arabia, the US ally which is the primary sponsor of radical Islamist terror worldwide, or Turkey, a Nato member heavily involved in funding and arming terrorist groups in Syria’s civil war.

University of Havana political science professor Esteban Morales said the decision was “important because it speaks to Obama’s desire to keep moving forward.”

It follows a wobble in gradually warming US-Cuba relations at the Summit of the Americas in Panama last week.

Cuba had exposed so-called civil society groups as having been briefed on what to say by US ambassador to Panama
Jonathan Farrar and Undersecretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour Michael Kosack.

Cuba also denounces US sanctions against its ally Venezuela and Washington’s aggressive efforts to destabilise that country’s Bolivarian revolution.