PRESIDENT Barack Obama could recommend Cuba’s removal from a list of state terror sponsors during this week’s Summit of the Americas in Panama, officials suggested on Tuesday.

Deputy national security adviser Benjamin Rhodes said that the State Department review of Cuba’s position was in “its final stages” and he declined to rule out an Obama announcement during the two-day summit.

Removing Cuba from its undeserved place on the list would be one of the biggest developments since Mr Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced in December that they would seek to re-establish diplomatic relations.

Mr Rhodes cautioned that the actual opening of embassies in Havana and in Washington was still some time off.

“When you have two countries that haven’t spoken to each other like this over 50 years, you have a lot of issues to work through,” he said before Mr Obama flew to Jamaica yesterday.

Washington’s fresh approach to Havana has been accompanied by renewed hostility to the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela which Mr Obama has said poses a threat to US security.

President Nicolas Maduro and almost all countries in the region have characterised US sanctions against seven Venezuelan officials as an act of aggression.

Mr Rhodes tried to row back from that position, saying: “The US doesn’t believe that Venezuela poses some threat to national security.”

He claimed that his government’s action “was not of a scale that in any way was aimed at targeting the Venezuelan government broadly.”