Illinois, Mar 31, (RHC), – The Illinois-Cuba Working Group, which is made up of political, agriculture and business leaders in the US state of Illinois asked Washington on Monday to remove Cuba from the list of countries sponsors of international terrorism.

The executive director of the group, Paul Johnson said that they had to achieve the removal of that obstacle from the road to the normalization of commercial relations with Cuba.

For Johnson, the reasons that led to the State Department to include Cuba in that black list back in 1982 are not there any longer and the Cuban government has not represented a military threat to the United States.

The group, set up in 2013, also demanded the end of the over-50-year US economic blockade of the island, once and for all.

This demands by the Illinois group come on the heels of the December 17 announcement by Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro to reestablish diplomatic relations and they also were the result of actions by Democratic senator Richard Durbin to favor agricultural trade with Cuba.

The group, set up in one of the major agricultural US states, is to turn Cuba into a commercial ally, while its designation as a state sponsor of terrorism does not allow communications, trade or travel between the two countries.

Johnson stressed the efforts by the Illinois Soybean Producers Organization and by the Illinois Board of Farms to correct what he called a historic mistake and create a better future for the families of the two nations.

According to figures in Illinois, that state could export to Cuba 6.6 million dollars in terms of corn and soy beans and add another 11 millions in different businesses if commercial relations with Cuba are reestablished.