HAVANA (AP) -- Police detained two of Cuba's best-known opposition
                  leaders Tuesday morning, hours before they were to hold a meeting of
                  dissidents, a leading human rights activist said.

                  Oswaldo Paya Sardinas and Hector Palacios were taken from their homes
                  around 6 a.m., said Elizardo Sanchez, president of the Cuban Commission
                  of Human Rights and Reconciliation. Sanchez said he had been among those
                  invited to a meeting of 20 dissident figures scheduled for that afternoon at
                  Palacios' home.

                  Palacios' wife, Gisela Delgado, was detained several hours after her
                  husband, Sanchez said.

                  Paya is leader of the Christian Liberation Movement in Cuba. Palacios
                  founded the Democratic Solidarity Party and oversees a study center for the
                  opposition movements on the island.

                  Both have earned international recognition. They met with visiting Illinois
                  Gov. George Ryan in October and with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria
                  Aznar when he traveled to Cuba for the Ibero-American summit in
                  November.

                  "We are hoping that this is a short-term detention," said Sanchez, who also
                  ranks among the island's best-known opposition figures.

                  Cuba's communist government refers to dissidents as
                  "counterrevolutionaries" and generally does not comment on such detentions.
                  Foreign Ministry spokesman Alejandro Gonzalez, among the few
                  government officials authorized to respond to press inquiries, did not answer
                  phone calls to his office Tuesday afternoon.

                  Sanchez said he believes Cuba's communist leadership is taking advantage
                  of interest in the international custody dispute involving 6-year-old Elian
                  Gonzalez to crack down on opponents.

                  "I think that the government is using its political success in that case to
                  neutralize the opposition, which really is quite small," he said.

                  Sanchez himself spent many years in Cuban prisons. His commission issues a
                  report on civil rights every six months along with a list of people it considers
                  to be imprisoned for political reasons.

                  In a report earlier this month, Sanchez's organization listed 344 people it said
                  were fined, arrested or imprisoned for political reasons during the last half of
                  1999, up from 324 during the first half. About 20 percent of those people
                  could be classified as prisoners of conscience under criteria established by
                  international human rights groups, Sanchez said.

                    Copyright 2000 The Associated Press.