The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee criticized President Barack Obama’s decision to remove Cuba from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism on Tuesday, stating that the administration had failed to keep Congress informed and rushed the process for delisting the Castro regime.
Rep. Ed Royce (R., Calif.) said in a statement that the "White House is taking another big step closer to the Castro regime without consulting Congress."
"Again, just like December’s announcement of its opening to Cuba, when even the State Department was kept in the dark, the White House is taking another big step closer to the Castro regime without consulting Congress," he said. "The State Department’s review process looks rushed. The Committee will be interested to hear from the White House how Cuba’s support for radical groups in the region, safe harbor for American fugitives—including one of the FBI’s ‘Most Wanted Terrorists’—and international weapons trafficking justifies today’s move."
Obama has previously signaled that he would drop Cuba from the list as part of his efforts to seek a rapprochement with the longtime U.S. adversary. Cuban President Raul Castro demanded that the U.S. designation be lifted as a precondition for normalizing relations between the two countries.
Critics of Obama’s move say that the Castro regime has still not been held accountable for illicit weapon shipments that foster instability in Latin America and abroad. Cuba evaded sanctions from both the United Nations Security Council and the U.S. Treasury Department after the capture of a North Korean vessel in 2013 that was being used in an attempt to smuggle Cuban weapons. Columbian authorities also seized a Chinese ship last month that was bound for Cuba and contained cargo labeled as chemicals and spare parts. The ship actually contained 100 tons of gunpowder and 3,000 artillery shells, among other munitions.
Congress will still have 45 days to review Cuba’s delisting and could approve a joint resolution to prevent its removal from the list. The proposal will likely face some resistance from Republicans and Cuban-American lawmakers.
Rep. Bradley Byrne (R., Ala.), who recently attended the Summit of the Americas in Panama as part of a congressional delegation, said in a statement on Tuesday that he had a "hard time understanding" Obama’s decision.
"After meeting with Cuban dissidents who were beaten, some very seriously, by Cuban embassy personnel last week in Panama, and considering the information linking Cuba with North Korea and inappropriate arms sales, I have a hard time understanding how the president can make this decision," he said.
"Cuban President Raul Castro said last weekend in his joint meeting with President Obama that we should be patient. President Obama should indeed be patient and it seems to me it is at best premature to take Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism," he added.