HAVANA (Reuters) -- Cuban state security freed leading moderate
                  dissident Oswaldo Paya after a day-long detention apparently intended to
                  prevent a scheduled opposition meeting in Havana, relatives said on
                  Wednesday.

                  They said Paya, who leads the small Christian Liberation Movement, was
                  released at 8 p.m. (0100 GMT) Tuesday night, after being picked up from
                  his home at dawn.

                  The relatives could not give more details of the detention, and Paya was not
                  immediately available to comment.

                  Another well-known moderate dissident, Hector Palacios, founder of the
                  Democratic Solidarity Party, was picked up Tuesday and taken for
                  questioning at a state security house in Havana. He was released late in the
                  afternoon.

                  Palacios said afterwards that the short arrests were intended to prevent a
                  meeting of dissidents to discuss a document they issued at last November's
                  Ibero-American Summit of Latin American, Spanish and Portuguese heads
                  of state.

                  The document, titled "Todos Unidos" (All Together) called for peaceful
                  reforms to communist leader Fidel Castro's one- party political system.

                  Palacios and Paya also held unprecedented meetings with various foreign
                  dignitaries, including Spain's Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, during the
                  November meeting.

                  Havana outlaws opposition parties and condemns all anti- government
                  activists as U.S.-funded counter-revolutionary "mercenaries" and "traitors"
                  masquerading as dissidents.

                  There was no official confirmation of Tuesday's arrests.

                  The detentions of Paya and Palacios, both of whose groups urge peaceful
                  reforms to Castro's one-party system, came after three months of tough
                  government action against dissidents, including temporary detentions of
                  several hundred activists, some for hours and others for days.

                     Copyright 2000 Reuters.