ANITA SNOW
  Associated Press

  HAVANA - Cuba's crackdown on government critics eased up over the weekend following the arrests of scores of independent journalists and pro-democracy activists.

  The island's leading human rights group reported three arrests - compared to 72 last week.

  "We have seen an appreciable drop in detentions in these last two days," Marcelo Lopez, spokesman for the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and Reconciliation, said Sunday.

  The dissidents are accused of conspiring with American diplomats in Cuba to drum up opposition to the communist government.

  U.S. officials here have stepped up contacts with Cuban dissidents, inviting them to receptions, offering them free Internet access and giving them radios, pamphlets and other material Fidel Castro's government considers subversive.

  The top American diplomat in Cuba, James Cason, has met publicly with the opposition and criticized Castro's government.

  The detainees, picked up over five days, included more than a dozen independent journalists, owners of private lending libraries, leaders of opposition political parties and pro-democracy activists who gathered signatures for a reform effort known as the Varela Project.

  The Cuban Commission on Human Rights hoped to have a final list of all those detained by Monday, Lopez said.

  Lopez said he was familiar with other lists with slightly higher numbers being distributed by Cuban exile groups in Miami, but said some tallies included people who were not detained after having their homes searched or who were questioned and released.

  Run by veteran human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez, the non-governmental organization has sought to be legally registered by the Cuban government - without success - since 1987, the year after it was founded.

  Sanchez himself remained free on Sunday, among the few vocal members of the organized opposition spared in the government's roundup.