An article published in the U.S. weekly The Nation warned that in Washington everyone knows today that Cuba is not a state sponsor of terrorism.
In arguing for the need to remove the Caribbean country from that unilateral White House list he asserted that such a listing only "adds another tranche of draconian sanctions" to the decades-old economic, trade and financial blockade against the island.
"Suffice it to say that Cuba could not access syringes for anti-Covid-19 vaccines and had difficulties importing medicines, food and essential raw materials during the pandemic" as a consequence of the tightening of that unilateral siege, the journalistic material pointed out.
Last month -he recalled-, Havana hosted the first high-level talks between Cuba and the United States since 2018, in this case on migration issues.
In the opinion of the columnist that "fueled speculation" that Joe Biden's administration might be "contemplating removing Cuba from the State Department's list of State Sponsors of Terrorism (SST), an easy first step that would not require congressional approval."
"In Washington, everyone knows that Cuba is not a state sponsor of terrorism. That was President (Barack) Obama's understanding when, in April 2015, he removed the island from the SST list" to which it would return in January 2021 by decision of then Republican President Donald Trump.
According to the author of the paper, Obama believed that it was in the national interest of the United States to depart from its former policy towards Cuba.
It is also significant, he added, that Cuba is back on the list for the most dishonest of reasons: Trump's pandering to the extremist anti-Cuba lobby.
If Trump's motives were dishonest, the process by which Cuba was put back on the list was even more deceitful.
"Trump found the loophole not in Cuban support for war or terror, but in Cuba's support for peace: specifically, for peace in Colombia," he stressed.
He insisted that removing the West Indian nation from the list of terrorist countries should be followed by other steps, including the repeal of all of Trump's executive actions.
Biden could also waive Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, which allows U.S. citizens to sue any person or entity doing business with property seized by the Cuban Revolution, he added.
That provision was suspended from the William Clinton administration (1993-2001), until Trump reactivated it in 2019.
As for Florida, lost to Democrats for the foreseeable future, it should not be the engine of U.S.-Latin American relations, he concluded.