• Submitted by: manso
• Politics and Government
• 02 / 16 / 2011

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(AFP) WASHINGTON — Cuba should be taken off the US list of state sponsors of terror, US diplomatic troubleshooter and former UN ambassador Bill Richardson said Tuesday.

The United States and Cuba, the Americas' only communist-ruled, one-party state, do not have full diplomatic relations. A full US economic embargo has been clamped on Havana since 1962.

While President Barack Obama's administration has made some adjustments to US policy, no dramatic strides have been made in the recent years.

"My view is that this terrorism list is not very consistent. It's an emotional issue," said Richardson, who speaks Spanish and has been to Cuba on private missions.

"I think the removal of Cuba of the terrorist list is one of those five, six steps the administration could make" to help yield change, he added.

Four countries are currently listed under that heading: Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria -- and thus subjected to certain trade sanctions. The United States took North Korea off in 2008. The State Department must renew the list each year.

"What I propose is that (bilateral) migration talks begin to include humanitarian issues," Richardson, a former New Mexico governor and Democratic lawmaker, said in a speech on US-Cuban relations at the Brookings Institution.

Cuba and the United States resumed bilateral migration talks in 2008.

Richardson urged the Cuban government to release US subcontractor Alan Gross, held by Havana for trial on charges of distributing communications material to local Cuban civilian groups.

Richardson, who has been a diplomatic troubleshooter for the United States for two decades with missions to countries such as North Korea and Cuba, said he had traveled to the Caribbean nation of 11 million three times in the past 18 months, most recently in August seeking Gross's freedom.

Source: www.google.com/hostednews/afp/