NSC: Biden Intends to Lift Sanctions on Cuba

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NSC Senior Director for the Western Hemisphere at the White House Juan Gonzalez confirmed that US President Joe Biden "shows interest in lifting the restrictions former President Donald Trump had imposed on remittances transfer to Cuba, permitting resuming flights to all Cuban airports and allowing Cuban-American citizens to travel to the Caribbean island," noting at the same time that his country still has a great concern about “the dire situation of the human rights in Cuba.”

In an interview for CNN in Spanish, Gonzalez said, "President Biden has given instructions to conduct a thorough review for the policies of the former administration toward Cuba, and once this is done, we will take the right decisions in this regard."

In its annual report on human trafficking, the US Department of State kept Cuba among 17 other countries in the world on its blacklist of countries it accuses of "human trafficking."

The annual report presented by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on human trafficking sharply criticized Cuba and accused it of imposing forced labor on Cuban doctors abroad, which constitutes a form of human trafficking, as he put it.

In return, Cuba's Foreign Affairs Minister Bruno Rodriguez described the allegations of his American counterpart as untrue, stressing that they represent a "crime against all workers in the health sector in Cuba."

Rodriguez tweeted on his Twitter account, "these allegations are a repetition of lies fabricated by Trump administration to justify its aggressive policy against Cuba."

The administration of former US President Donald Trump had announced, a few days before the end of its term, that it had reinstated Cuba on the US blacklist of "State Sponsors of Terrorism," knowing that former President Barack Obama's administration had taken it off that list. 

Prior to that came Trump's announcement, last year, of new sanctions that would prevent visiting Americans from staying in properties owned by the Cuban government, as well as restricting the import of Cuban alcohol and tobacco.

After Biden took office, about 100 Cuban personalities, including artists, professors, intellectuals, and businessmen, signed a petition asking US President Joe Biden to lift the embargo imposed by the United States on Cuba since 1962.

The petition signatories called on Biden to "begin dismantling the sanctions system that is continuously harming the Cuban people."