CAMPAIGNERS have welcomed the announcement that the United States has removed Cuba from its arbitrary list of countries sponsoring terrorism.

A statement by President Joe Biden on Tuesday night said: “The US maintains as a central objective of its policy the need to achieve greater freedom and democracy, greater respect for human rights and greater freedom of enterprise in Cuba. 

“To achieve these objectives, practical engagement with Cuba and the Cuban people will be necessary, going beyond what is described in the National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-5) and taking into account recent developments in Cuba and the changing regional and global context.”

The White House said the new circumstances meant that it had decided to revoke NSPM-5 and said lawsuits relating to confiscated property in Cuba can no longer be filed in US courts.

The memorandum also drops rules that prohibit financial transactions with some Cuban entities. 

As then-president Donald Trump left office in January 2021, he added Cuba to the list, which it had been removed from by president Barack Obama in 2015.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez said: “I thank all those who contributed to the decision announced today by the United States to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, where it should never have been and which, together with two other measures adopted, has had a high cost for the country and Cuban families.”

The US-based People’s Forum said in a statement that the removal of Cuba from the list had caome about as a “result of relentless efforts by activists and organisations over the past several years.”

But it added: “The US continues to uphold a strangling economic blockade on Cuba, which intentionally generates scarcity of essential items on the island.”

US journalist Eugene Puryear told the Morning Star that the decision this was “a victory for the Cuban people who have suffered deep harm from this particular tightening of the blockade. 

“Cuba never should’ve been on the list in the first place.”

Tricontinental Institute for Social Research director Vijay Prashad condemned the Biden administration for waiting until “its last week to do something that it had said it would do before its election.”

Black Agenda Report executive editor Margaret Kimberley said: “Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, Senator Marco Rubio, is representative of the Cuban exile community, who are committed to the destruction of the revolution. 

“The people of Cuba are used as playthings of imperialism with no human rights that the US is bound to respect.”