Biden Administration Announces Review of Trump's Cuba Policy

White House press secretary Jen Psaki at her daily press conference.MANDEL NGAN / AFP

The Joe Biden Administration is preparing to change US policy towards Cuba, the White House reported Thursday.

The announcement comes in the second week in power of the new president, after the Donald Trump Administration announced in the last days of his mandate the inclusion of Cuba in the list of countries sponsoring terrorism.

That last measure was the culmination of Trump's dismantling of the initiative led by his predecessor, Barack Obama, in whose administration Biden was vice president, to reestablish ties with Havana.

“Our policy towards Cuba is guided by two principles.

First, support for democracy and human rights, that will be at the center of all our efforts.

The second is that Americans, especially Cuban-Americans, are the best ambassadors for freedom in Cuba.

So we will review the policies of the Trump Administration, ”White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday at her daily press conference.

Nine days before Trump left the White House, his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, announced that the United States was re-designating Cuba as a "state sponsor of terrorism."

They alleged that Havana "repeatedly provides support for acts of international terrorism by guaranteeing a safe harbor to terrorists."

Cuba entered that black list in 1982, which also includes Syria, Iran and North Korea, but in May 2015 the Obama Administration removed the country from it.

The decision had few practical benefits for Havana, whose diplomatic relations with Washington have been broken since 1961, but it was interpreted as a key gesture in the normalization of relations, initiated by Obama and Raúl Castro, and frustrated with the coming to power of Trump. .

The return of the country to the list of state sponsors of terrorism marked the total reversal of the Obama Administration's efforts to rebuild ties with the island, a historic enemy of the Cold War.

And it complicated the field of maneuver for a possible approach to the diplomacy of the Administration of Joe Biden, who was Obama's vice president, who will take office on the 20th.