By Anita Snow, Associated Press

 HAVANA -- Cuba's accusations about dissidents in the pay of Washington have revived a
 longstanding debate over whether using US government money to support the Cuban opposition
 does more harm than good.

 About $20 million has been paid by the US Agency for International Development, or US AID, to
 US-based groups working to end communist rule on the island. They run websites, distribute
 pro-democracy books and pamphlets, even provide food and medicine to the families of political
 prisoners.

 But some veteran activists say the money on ly gives Fidel Castro's government ammunition to
 crack down on dissidents, like the 75 sentenced recently for allegedly conspiring with the United
 States.

 Among prosecutors' evidence was a list found by Cuban agents in the home of independent
 journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe. It allegedly detailed $7,000 in payments over a year, apparently
 for articles by Espinosa Chepe that were critical of Cuba's economy.

 It was unclear who made the payments, but Espinosa Chepe sent articles to various publications
 and websites, including Miami-based CubaNet, which received US AID funding. He was
 sentenced to 20 years in prison.

 ''These people receive money and live off it while in the service of a power that harms their people,''
 Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said this week.

 Officials at the US Interests Section in Havana, the main diplomatic office, vigorously deny that the
 American government has dissidents on its payroll. Dissidents also deny it.

 Still, US AID has funded US-based groups. As of last year, it had given a total of $1.4 million to
 groups that publish the works of Cuban independent reporters on Miami-based Web pages,
 including more than $800,000 to CubaNet. It is unclear how much of that money actually has made
 its way to individuals or groups on the island. ''This funding gives exactly the wrong impression,''
 said Cuba specialist Wayne Smith, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for International
 Policy. ''First, not much of it gets to people in need. Secondly, it just gives ammunition to the Cuban
 government to say these people are paid agents of the United States, which, of course, they are
 not.''

 Among the biggest recipients of Cuba program money from US AID since 1997 has been
 Freedom House. With $1.3 million in US AID grants, the New York-based human rights group
 has distributed about 40,000 books, pamphlets, and other materials on human rights, democracy,
 and free market economics.

 In 1997, Cuban officials expelled an American, David Dorn, who traveled to the island to visit
 dissidents on behalf of Freedom House. At the time, the Communist Party newspaper Granma said
 Dorn was detained for ''supplying material and financing to counterrevolutionary chieftains'' on the
 island. Granma said he was ''recruited'' by Frank Calzon, then director of the group's Cuban
 programs.

 Three years later, Cuban authorities arrested two Czechs -- one a member of the Czech Parliament
 -- and alleged they had planned to deliver computer equipment to dissidents with the help of
 Freedom House. The Czechs were held for 25 days and released only after they admitted breaking
 the law by meeting with dissidents.

 Calzon now is director for the Washington-based Center for a Free Cuba, which has received $2.2
 million from US AID. The center gathers and disseminates information about human rights in Cuba
 and pays the travel costs of representatives who visit the island to distribute prodemocracy
 literature.

 US AID also has given $1 million to the Institute for Democracy in Cuba, a coalition of
 Miami-based groups; $250,000 to the Cuban Dissidence Task Group of Miami; and $1.6 million
 to the Washington-based International Republican Institute. Money also went to the University of
 Miami and other institutions to help plan for a transition in Cuba.

 The largest and most politically powerful Cuban exile group, the Cuban American National
 Foundation, says it receives no US government funds.

 The US AID effort for Cuba is reminiscent of former President Ronald Reagan's program
 supporting dissidents in Poland, where the opposition rallied around the Solidarity labor union. That
 effort helped bring an end to decades of communist rule in 1989. ''It worked in Poland because the
 adversary of Poland nationalism was the Soviet Union,'' Smith said. ''But in Cuba the adversary of
 Cuban nationalism is the United States.''