President Obama is evaluating a recommendation by the State Department on whether to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and will likely make a decision in the next few days.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the White House is “looking forward to the opportunity” to spend some time this week evaluating the recommendation from Foggy Bottom.
“I don’t have a specific timeline to offer you in terms of when the decision is made,” he said. “But you can expect the decision in the coming days.”
Opening a direct thaw in the decades-long freeze on U.S. diplomatic relations with Cuba, Obama met for an hour Saturday with Cuban President Raul Castro for the first time the countries top leaders have had face-to-face talks in 50 years.
The meeting took place on the sidelines of the Summit for the Americas in Panama and came amid efforts by the Obama administration to normalize relations with the island nation and renew diplomatic ties by opening embassies in each other’s countries.
Castro has said the U.S. must remove Cuba from the terror list if it wants to move forward with opening the embassies.
