HAVANA (Reuters) -- Cuba on Thursday will deport three Swedish journalists
                  who met with dissident reporters and were then detained on the communist-run
                  island for two days for not having the correct visas, the Swedish Embassy said.

                  "They are being expelled," Swedish Embassy first secretary Marianne Lidskog
                  told Reuters, quoting information from the Swedish Foreign Ministry in
                  Stockholm.

                  Lidskog said the three would be put on an Air France flight out of the Caribbean
                  island to Paris at 8:40 p.m. (0040 GMT) Thursday evening. They entered on
                  tourist visas instead of journalists' credentials, as Cuba requires for foreign
                  reporters who plan to work here.

                  The diplomat confirmed that Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh had sent a
                  formal protest to President Fidel Castro's government, saying it was "tragic" that
                  Cuba was showing itself to be a "dictatorial regime" by arresting journalists.

                  Paris-based Reporters Without Frontiers (RSF) identified the Swedes as Birger
                  Thureson, Peter Gotell and Elena Soderquist, and said the three had met with
                  journalists who work outside Cuba's state-only media.

                  Reporters of Cuba's dissident news agencies, who are considered U.S.-backed
                  "counter-revolutionaries" by the government, confirmed the Swedes had given
                  them a seminar earlier in the week on press freedom.