By ANITA SNOW
Associated Press Writer

HAVANA -- Cuba defended the quick trials and heavy sentences given to 75 dissidents this week, saying increased hostility from Washington forced it to protect
itself from a U.S.-backed opposition working to undermine the island's socialist system.

"We have been patient, we have been tolerant," Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said Wednesday during a 3 1/2-hour presentation to international journalists.
"But we have been obligated to apply our laws."

Perez Roque also denied criticism the crackdown was timed so the world's attention would be focused on the Iraq war.

"This decision was taken before the war on Iraq," Perez Roque said.

The sentences have been condemned by governments and human rights groups around the world.

Tensions between Havana and Washington have been growing since U.S. Interests Section Chief James Cason, the top U.S. diplomat in Havana, began assuming a
higher profile in his support of the opposition.

Perez Roque on Wednesday accused Cason of violating diplomatic protocol with open support of dissident groups. "Our patience ran out with Mr. Cason," he said.

Cason denies accusations that the U.S. Interests Section had dissidents on the payroll, saying the mission operates no differently than American embassies in other
countries.

The U.S. government has condemned the crackdown repeatedly since the first arrests on March 18.

"This is symptomatic of the dictatorship of the Cuban regime," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said of the terms.

Sentences range from 6 to 28 years. No trial has lasted more than one day.

The exact number of defendants varied in recent days, but the government and activists agreed Thursday that 75 people went on trial in the harshest crackdown on
Cuba's opposition in decades.

"There has never been anything similar to this in the history of Cuba," said veteran activist Elizardo Sanchez, among the few leading opponents still free.

Pro-democracy activist Oswaldo Paya, who also escaped the crackdown, said, "This is not the end of the peaceful opposition."

Paya is a leading organizer of the Varela Project, which gathered more than 11,000 signatures seeking a voters' initiative on laws that would guarantee civil rights
such as freedom of speech.

Arrested in the crackdown were numerous Varela Project activists, as well as independent journalists, opposition party leaders and rights activists.

The dissidents were not charged with criticizing the government, but for receiving American government funds and collaborating with U.S. diplomats.

Perez Roque presented letters and detailed lists of payments he said proved the defendants were getting money from the U.S. government.

For instance, Perez Roque said that in the home of independent journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, investigators found evidence that over one year he received
$7,154 -- a huge sum in a country where an average government salary is $25 a month. A wad of $13,000 in cash allegedly was found stashed in the lining of a
jacket.

Espinosa Chepe, who wrote about the Cuban economy for Web sites in Miami, was sentenced to 20 years.

The payments Perez Roque mentioned apparently came from U.S.-based groups receiving funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Perez Roque also responded to international concerns about how the trials were held.

"There are questions about the fairness of such expedited proceedings," United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Sergio Vieira de Mello said in
Geneva.

Perez Roque said the proceedings followed Cuban law, with all defendants represented by attorneys.

Defendants heard the charges against them, had a chance to respond and in each case both evidence and witnesses were presented in open court, said Perez Roque.
He said all have the right to appeal.

Responding to criticism that the proceedings were closed to international journalists and foreign diplomats, he said there was not enough room for the reporters in the
courtrooms.

"If they need information on the trials, they can come to the foreign ministry," Perez Roque said.

At the trials, state security agents who had posed as dissidents revealed their true identities and testified for the state.

President Fidel Castro was enraged by Cason's meeting with dissidents at one of their homes in late February and the diplomat's subsequent declaration that "the
Cuban government is afraid: afraid of freedom of conscience, afraid of freedom of expression, afraid of human rights."

Castro called Cason a "bizarre official" and warned that his government could shut down the U.S. mission in Havana -- something he has done several times before.

Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press