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Updated: January 23, 2008
Cuba has been a fixture on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorism-sponsoring states since 1982 despite Fidel Castro’s announcement in 1992 that supporting insurgents abroad was no longer an active Cuban policy. According to the State Department, Cuba remains on the list because it has “publicly opposed” the U.S.-led war on terror and maintains friendly relationships with other state sponsors of terrorism, like Iran. Cuba in the past has provided shelter to fugitives from U.S. justice without extradition and hosted members of terrorist organizations. Though Fidel Castro transferred power to his brother Raul in July 2006, little has changed in Havana’s relations with the United States.
The U.S. government says yes, but many experts are skeptical. The State Department placed Cuba on its list of states that sponsor terrorism in 1982, citing Fidel Castro’s training and arming of communist rebels in Africa and Latin America. But intelligence experts have been hard pressed to find evidence that Cuba currently provides weapons or military training to terrorist groups. In 1998, a comprehensive review by the U.S. intelligence community concluded that Cuba does not pose a threat to U.S. national security, which implies that Cuba no longer sponsors terrorism. Critics argue that Cuba’s place on the state sponsors list is a remnant of the Cold War and that it distracts from current counterterrorism initiatives.
U.S. government sources offer these reasons:
In May 2002, Undersecretary of State John Bolton accused Cuba of having a limited biological weapons program and selling dual-use biotechnology to rogue states. Bolton did not name the states in question but noted that Castro visited Iran and Libya in 2001. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell later clarified Bolton’s statement by saying he did not believe Cuba had bioweapons, merely the capability to conduct biological research for offensive purposes.
Yes, but we don’t know how closely they cooperate. In 2001, Castro visited Iran, Libya, and Syria, but other than a commitment to ongoing trade and plans for some public health exchanges, which were announced during Castro’s visits, we know very little about these countries’ dealings with Cuban intelligence. Cuba also has diplomatic ties with North Korea. During his visit to Iran, Castro reportedly said, “Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees.”
Ties between Cuba and Iran have continued since then. In 2003, Ricardo Cabrisas Ruiz, a career officer in Cuba's foreign intelligence service, met Iranian President Mohammad Khatami to discuss expanding cooperation between the two countries, with a focus on economic ties. U.S. counterintelligence reports say that in July 2003, Cuban intelligence jammed transmission of some Iranian television broadcasts during Tehran’s crackdown on dissidents commemorating a 1999 student uprising.
Within hours of the attacks, Cuba offered medical assistance to the victims and opened Cuban airports to U.S. commercial planes diverted because of the crisis. That night, Castro condemned terrorism on national television. In subsequent weeks, the Cuban government signed all twelve U.N.-sanctioned international antiterrorism treaties.
At the same time, Cuban officials also used the opportunity to repeatedly complain about Cuba's own experience as a victim of what it calls “U.S.-sponsored terrorism,” including attacks by U.S.-backed anti-Castro groups. The complaints went over poorly in Washington, where they were viewed as evidence of Cuba's waffling commitment to fighting terrorism.
Yes. Notwithstanding Cuba’s presence on the terrorist list, experts say that U.S. and Cuban officials have held low-level talks aimed at getting Cuban help in collecting intelligence and identifying fugitives from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network. But these discussions have reportedly yielded few results, and counterterrorism experts say communist Cuba knows little about the Islamist groups behind the September 11 attacks.
Cuba has not, to date, implemented “counterterrorism efforts in the international or regional fora,” according to the State Department, although Raul Castro pledged to return any detainees who escaped from the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in 2002.
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