By ANITA SNOW
Associated Press Writer

HAVANA -- Cuba said Friday it will not let a U.N. human rights monitor visit the island because the U.S.-backed resolution creating her post was illegitimate.

Instead, French jurist Christine Chanet would be more useful visiting terror suspects at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque
said.

The U.N. Human Rights Commission last year approved a resolution calling on Cuba to allow such liberties as freedom of speech and association and to let a U.N.
monitor in to check on progress. Chanet was appointed in January.

"Cuba has not cooperated, nor will it cooperate with the resolution," Perez Roque said.

He charged that U.S. arm-twisting brought about the resolution and said Cuba does not accept the legitimacy of the commission vote.

"The only place on this island where the existence of such a special envoy could be justified is at the (U.S.) Naval Base at Guantanamo," he said.

The United States is holding 650 suspected Taliban and al-Qaida fighters at the base in eastern Cuba.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Sergio Vieira de Mello accused the United States on Thursday of keeping the Guantanamo detainees in a "legal
black hole" by denying them hearings in U.S. courts.

A U.S. court ruled this week that because the prisoners are aliens held outside U.S. sovereign territory, they are not entitled to such constitutional rights as being
charged with a crime or having access to a lawyer.

Communist-run Cuba has no control over how the base is used. To prevent alienating Americans who support changes in U.S. policies toward Cuba, the island's
leaders officially have not opposed the prison's existence, though they resent having a U.S. base in their country.

The U.N. rights commission is preparing for its annual meeting in Geneva beginning Monday, and the foreign minister said he would attend with a delegation.

The commission has voted to censure Cuba every year over the past decade except 1998. Cuba annually accuses the United States of strong-arm tactics to lobby
support for the vote -- a claim American officials deny.

Cuba insists it respects human rights by guaranteeing broad social services such as free health care and education. It says rich nations that fail to protect the poor are
in no position to preach.

Censure by the U.N. body brings no penalties but draws international attention to a country's rights record.

Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press