HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) -- Cuban authorities temporarily rounded up about
                  100 dissidents over the weekend to block anti-government activities coinciding
                  with World Human Rights Day, activists said on Monday.

                  The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation said most
                  were freed in a few hours but 10 people remained in jail on Monday afternoon,
                  according to relatives.

                  "This weekend we have had the highest level of detentions in many years, more
                  than 100 in 72 hours," said Elizardo Sanchez, the commission president and a
                  well-known dissident jailed in the past.

                  The arrests took place around the country on Saturday and on Sunday, which
                  was Human Rights Day, to stop events like open-air meetings or the distribution
                  of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, Sanchez said.

                  Most of the planned activities were prevented with the exception of a few
                  closed-door meetings.

                  President Fidel Castro's communist government views local dissidents as
                  U.S.-backed "counter-revolutionary" troublemakers.

                  The increased use of short-term arrests by Cuban security services has kept at
                  bay the Caribbean island's small opposition movement, which analysts say
                  currently poses little threat to Castro's power base.

                     Copyright 2000 Reuters.