HAVANA (AP) - Risking international criticism, the government Monday
                   sentenced one of Cuba's best-known dissidents to five years in prison and
                   set lesser terms for his three co-defendants.

                   The conviction and sentence for Vladimiro Roca, a former military pilot and
                   son of the late Cuban Communist Party leader Blas Roca, was announced
                   during the midday news.

                   ''It is wrong, it is unjust,'' said Roca's wife, Magaly de Armas, who learned
                   of the sentence on the government news. ''They didn't even call.''

                   ''We are going to appeal immediately,'' she added.

                   A five-member tribunal tried Roca and three others behind closed doors
                   the first week of March.

                   The court set sentences of four years each for lawyer Rene Gomez
                   Manzano and engineer Felix Bonne and 3 years for economist Marta
                   Beatriz Roque, government television said.

                   The sentences could hold international repercussions for Cuba, which has
                   worked to improve its ties with other nations, particularly in the Caribbean
                   and Latin America. Canada, the Vatican and several European nations
                   pressured Cuba to free the four dissidents.

                   Communist officials insist there are no political prisoners on this island
                   nation of 11 million people, only those jailed for common crimes. They
                   reject the characterization of the four dissidents as prisoners of conscience.

                   The four were arrested in July 1997 for criticizing a Communist Party
                   document that they said did not present solutions to Cuba's severe
                   economic problems.

                   They were also accused of encouraging Cubans not to vote in that year's
                   elections, holding two news conferences with foreign media, exhorting
                   foreign businessmen not to invest in Cuba and asking Cuban exiles to
                   encourage their kin on the island to undertake acts of civil disobedience.

                   In a detailed report after the trial, the government said that prosecutor
                   Edelmira Pedriz Yumar ''demonstrated in her report the existing ties
                   between the activities undertaken by the defendants and the forms of
                   aggression toward Cuba adopted by United States' policies.''

                   The report accused the four of receiving financial and material support
                   from organizations in the United States and using U.S.-based media,
                   especially those in Miami and the U.S. government's Radio Marti, ''to
                   encourage civil disobedience and transgression of current law in Cuba.''
 

                   Copyright 1999 Associated Press.