HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) --One of Cuba's best-known dissidents, Martha Beatriz
Roque, was jailed for more than four hours on Saturday, apparently for refusing to
allow fumigators into her house during a state campaign to eradicate dengue disease.

"They came in a Lada (automobile) and took her away. We don't know what they're
going to do," fellow dissident Arnaldo Ramos said after witnessing the mid-afternoon
incident at Roque's Havana home.

Following her release from a Havana detention center, Roque told reporters: "They
kept me in for four and one-half hours. They didn't explain anything. Then they told
me that I could go."

Cuba began an emergency campaign earlier this month to contain a bad outbreak of
the potentially lethal mosquito-borne viral disease dengue fever, with the main thrust
being house-to-house fumigation.

Roque, speaking before she was picked up, said she had denied entry to the
fumigators on health grounds.

"I'm not in a great state, and the fumigation could be damaging. They've very
aggressive, and they're coming to take me away," she told Reuters by telephone just
minutes before she was driven off.

Dissidents are often picked up for short periods.

Roque, who was released from prison last year after nearly three years behind bars
on charges of inciting sedition, heads the dissident Cuban Institute of Independent
Economists.

President Fidel Castro's government regards her and all other dissidents as
counter-revolutionaries in the service of the U.S. government or Florida-based
anti-communist Cuban American groups.

    Copyright 2002 Reuters