“OFAC has issued certain specific licenses for passenger ferry service [between the United States and Cuba],” Chemali said on Tuesday.
The move comes amid the process of the relations’ restoration between Washington and Havana, announced by US President Barack Obama in the end of 2014.
“There is no general license authorizing passenger ferry service between the United States and Cuba. Specific licenses may be issued on a case-by-case basis,” the spokesperson explained.
In December 2014, President Obama announced his intention to normalize US-Cuba relations, which entails reopening the US Embassy in Havana and lifting the trade and travel embargo on Cuba.
Most recently, Obama announced that Cuba will be taken off the US state sponsors of terrorism list, a designation that Havana has pressed Washington to change in order to fully normalize relations between the countries.
Cuba in turn has provided written assurance to Washington that the country will no longer support terrorist groups, particularly those at war with the governments in Spain and Columbia, in order to get delisted as a state sponsor of terror.
US authorities have yet to lift the trade embargo against the island country that was imposed after the 1959 Cuban Revolution.
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