Cuba is one of seven nations on a U.S. list of state sponsors of international terrorism.

Cuba is one of seven nations on a U.S. list of state sponsors of international terrorism because it harbors those who have committed past acts of terrorism and because it continues to have links with foreign terrorist organizations, says Michael Sheehan, the State Department's coordinator for counter-terrorism. At a May 1 briefing where the State Department released its annual "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report, Sheehan said it is very important to the United States that terrorists know they "can't conduct a terrorist act and hunker down in a country for so many years and get away with it. Sheehan said Cuba is linked to two Colombian terrorist organizations -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the National Liberation Army (ELN), which both maintained a permanent presence on the island. FARC continued to engage in terrorist acts over the past year, while the ELN carried out several high-profile kidnappings, including the hijacking of an aircraft carrying 46 people, the State Department said. The report said that while much of Latin America continued to be free from terrorist attacks, Colombia and Peru experienced terrorist activity. During 1999, U.S. concern grew over the involvement of the FARC, the ELN and paramilitary groups in protecting narcotics trafficking. Estimates of the profits to terrorist groups from their involvement in the illicit drug trade ranged into the hundreds of millions of dollars, the report said.