UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. Photo: United Nations / Archive.
Cuba’s role as a mediator in several international conflicts is not in line with that of a state that “sponsors terrorism,” said this Friday the spokesman for the UN General Secretariat, Stéphane Dujarric.
The spokesman was asked about the United States’ insistence on keeping Cuba on the list of “state sponsors of terrorism,” along with only three other countries: North Korea, Iran and Syria.
In his response, Dujarric recalled that the Secretary General, the Portuguese Antonio Guterres, “greatly appreciates Cuba’s efforts as a mediator in a series of peace processes,” among which he highlighted the case of Colombia, a case that is always used as an example at the UN.
The spokesman then said that such a mediating role “is not the kind of behavior one would expect from a country accused of being a state sponsor of terrorism.”
US confirms that Cuba remains on the list of countries sponsoring terrorism
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The previous US government, headed by Donald Trump (2017-2021), announced at the end of its term that it was adding Cuba to that “black list.”
His successor, Joe Biden, did not reverse the measure, as he did with other controversial foreign policy issues, limiting himself last May to removing Cuba’s name from a separate list of “countries that do not cooperate against terrorism.”
Every November, the UN General Assembly votes on a (non-binding) resolution to denounce the US embargo on the Caribbean island, and that session also serves to denounce the continuation of Cuba on that “black list” of the Department of State.
In the last session on this case, 187 countries voted against the embargo, and only two (the US and Israel) supported it; even Ukraine abstained.
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