WASHINGTON — The government of President Joe Biden is determined to maintain a dialogue with Cuba as long as it promotes “American interests,” the State Department reported after a bilateral meeting on security held this Wednesday in Washington.
The Havana regime clarified, for its part, in a statement, that this meeting “does not contradict the most absolute rejection of the unjustified and arbitrary inclusion of Cuba” on the black list of sponsors of terrorism of the US State Department.
This dialogue “improves the national security of the United States through better coordination of law enforcement,” which “allows us to better protect American citizens and bring criminals to justice,” the Department of Justice justified the decision. American state in a statement.
Washington estimated that strengthening channels of police “cooperation” “improves the defense of human rights by the United States,” which has imposed an economic embargo on the Caribbean island for more than six decades due to the confiscation of properties, banks and businesses. Americans after the communist regime came to power.
Political prisoners
In addition, the Democratic administration maintained that the issue of human rights “is part of all bilateral conversations.”
But at least 500 political prisoners received sentences of up to 25 years for participating in the historic anti-government demonstrations on July 11, 2021. Human rights organizations and the United States embassy on the communist island raise that number to up to 1,000.
For its part, the Cuban Foreign Ministry reported in a statement that during the meeting it delivered “information and cooperation proposals to the US side on the activities of people living in the United States, identified by their links to terrorism.”
At the beginning of December, Cuba published a list of 61 people and twenty organizations, most of them residents in the United States and under criminal investigation on the island for their alleged involvement in “acts of terrorism.”
They include, for example, people that Cuba links to failed attacks against the late dictator Fidel Castro (1926-2016) or that it accuses of promoting public disorder before and during the historic protests of 2021.
At the meeting, the parties talked about cooperation on issues such as illegal migrant smuggling, drug trafficking and other scourges, the Cuban Foreign Ministry added.
Continuation of the rapprochement that Obama began
This security dialogue began in 2015 under the mandate of Democrat Barack Obama, of whom Biden was vice president, following the reestablishment of bilateral diplomatic ties.
Between 2015 and 2018, the two former enemies during the Cold War held four dialogues of this type, which led in 2017 to the signing of a cooperation agreement. Obama promoted rapprochement in exchange for nothing with the communist regime that continues to violate human rights and restrict public freedoms.
But former Republican President Donald Trump (2017-2021) put an end to the rapprochement and once again included Cuba on the list of countries that sponsor terrorism, on which it continues under Biden’s mandate.
