US keeps Cuba on terrorism blacklist

US keeps Cuba on terrorism blacklist
AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States announced Thursday it has retained
communist Cuba on a list of countries that allegedly support terrorism.

The State Department report lumping Cuba with Iran, Syria and Sudan was
released weeks after US President Barack Obama made overtures to Havana,
which is under a decades-old embargo, by lifting curbs on travel and
money transfers.

Despite keeping Cuba on the blacklist, the report also highlighted
positive steps taken by the government in Havana.

The report said "the Cuban government continued to provide safe haven to
several terrorists," even if it "no longer actively supports" armed
struggle beyond its shores.

It said members of the Basque separatist ETA, the Colombian rebel group
FARC and the Colombian group ELN remained in Cuba last year after some
arrived to help conduct peace negotiations with the governments of Spain
and Colombia.

It also said that the government of President Raul Castro "continued to
publicly defend the FARC," the Spanish acronym for the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia.

But it noted that on July 6 last year former president Fidel Castro
urged the FARC to release the hostages they were holding without
preconditions.

And Castro "has also condemned the FARC's mistreatment of captives and
of their abduction of civilian politicians who had no role in the armed
conflict," it added.

It said that the United States had "no evidence of terrorist-related
money laundering or terrorist financing activities in Cuba," but pointed
out that Cuba's banking systems remain among the most secretive and
opaque in the world.

It also said Havana still allowed members of US militant groups like the
Boricua Popular, or Macheteros, and the Black Liberation Army to live on
its territory, even though they were fugitives from US justice.

"In keeping with its public declaration, the government has not provided
safe haven to any new US fugitives wanted for terrorism since 2006," it
added.

US keeps Cuba on terrorism blacklist (1 May 2009)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090430/pl_afp/usattackscuba_20090430203544