BY JANE BUSSEY

 Cuban authorities delayed an expected announcement Thursday about the fate of
 two prominent Czech politicians, whose arrests a week ago came in the midst of
 what Amnesty International is calling a new political crackdown against
 dissidents on the island.

 Facing a deepening diplomatic crisis with its one-time Cold War ally, the Czech
 Cabinet went into an emergency session to discuss the plight of Ivan Pilip, a
 member of the Czech parliament, and Jan Bubenik, a former student leader.

 Czech Foreign Ministry spokesman Ales Pospisil said Czech charge d'affaires in
 Havana, Josef Marsicek, was denied access to Pilip and Bubenik on Thursday
 because prison authorities said the diplomat lacked authorization from the Cuban
 Foreign Ministry.

 Pilip and Bubenik were arrested in the provincial city of Ciego de Avila last Friday
 and are being held in a prison near Havana on charges of making ``subversive''
 contacts and other activities prohibited for visitors on tourist visas.

 Although Czech diplomats insisted that Cuban judicial authorities were to rule
 whether the men would be formally charged in Cuban courts, no decision was
 announced on Thursday. The International Press Center at the Cuban Foreign
 Ministry said they had received no word on an expected decision.

 The mounting tension came as Amnesty International, the London-based human
 rights group, sent a letter to the Cuban government, denouncing ``a new wave of
 political oppression'' and calling for the release of jailed dissidents.

 ``The increasing number of people jailed for peacefully exercising their rights to
 freedom of expression, clearly demonstrates the level to which the government
 will go in order to weaken the political opposition and suppress dissidents,''
 Amnesty International said in a letter sent earlier this week.

 Cuban President Fidel Castro himself stepped up the pressure with a speech
 televised late Wednesday in which he railed against certain unspecified
 journalists, although he pointedly singled out ``reporters tolerated by the agencies
 they represent,'' for writing stories ``slandering'' the revolution.

 ``They not only transmit lies, but rude insults, rude insults against the revolution
 and particularly against me,'' Castro said, adding a veiled threat that the
 government might consider closing down news agencies rather than expelling the
 journalists and suggesting that the agencies themselves put the journalist on a
 plane to leave Cuba.

 Although Castro did not cite anyone by name, just a week ago state television
 made a harsh and personal attack on the reporting of Pascal Fletcher, a
 correspondent for a British newspaper, The Financial Times, who is also a
 part-time reporter for the Reuters news agency.

 The government staged the burial of two Cubans who died when they were
 stowaways on an aircraft flying to Britain and prepared for a massive
 demonstration today to protest U.S. immigration policy that gives residency to
 Cubans who manage to reach U.S. shores.

 While the Cuban media was silent Thursday on the subject of the two jailed
 Czech citizens, in Prague, representatives of both governments took to the
 airwaves to defend their government positions in the midst of a series of meetings.

 Cuban Chargé d'affaires David Paulovich told Czech television that the Cuban
 government has evidence against the two men. ``We have never accused anybody
 without evidence,'' Paulovich said, according to the Czech News Agency CTK.

 Paulovich also said that the top Czech diplomat in Havana had been able to meet
 with the two imprisoned men, a claim denied by authorities in Prague, who said
 Marsicek had been denied access.

 Czech political analysts were commenting on the possible concessions that the
 Czech Republic could make to negotiate Pilip and Bubenik's release, in particular
 refraining from condemning Cuba's human rights record at an upcoming United
 Nations forum in Geneva in April.

 Commentator Petruska Sustrova wrote in the daily Lidove Noviny that the
 government faced a tough decision because many politicians and diplomats
 insisted that Prague should not ``irritate Castro'' because of the dissident
 question.

 ``But how can we say that the Cuban regime does not violate human rights when
 our own citizens have been arrested there for something that is not punishable or
 wrong?'' Sustrova wrote.

 Following the Cabinet session, Deputy Prime Minister Pavel Rychetsky said that
 the government would send a third note of protest over the detentions using other
 diplomatic channels. Cuban diplomats returned two earlier notes calling for the
 release of the two men.

 Authorities in the Czech capital requested help from members of the European
 Union and the Organization of European Security and Cooperation. Foreign
 Minister Jan Kavan said he had also sent letters to Chilean President Ricardo
 Lagos and Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda, asking them to intercede
 with Cuban authorities.

 Department of State spokesman Richard Boucher condemned the arrest of the
 ``two distinguished Czech citizens,'' as did Republican Congressman Lincold
 Díaz-Balart.

 Bubenik, who was a leader of the 1989 Velvet Revolution that pushed out the
 Communist government, and Pilip, who has served as education and finance
 minister, traveled to Cuba on a private trip to meet with dissidents, stopping in
 Washington and Miami before traveling to the island on a flight through Cancun,
 Mexico.

 Bubenik's mother, Jitka Bubenik, told Prague radio that before her son left
 Prague, he told her: ``I have almost forgotten what everyday life under socialism
 was like. In Cuba, I want to see what that looks like.''

 Herald Staff Writer Renato Perez and Herald wire services contributed to this
 report.