Free radios anger Cuban official

HAVANA -- Warning "our patience has limits," Cuba's foreign minister lashed out at the United States Saturday over allegations that U.S. officials are distributing radios so Cubans can listen to pro-American broadcasts.

Speaking before tens of thousands of people at a weekly government rally, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque also accused the United States of conducting "electronic espionage" at its office in Havana.

Washington has not responded publicly to the allegations.

Cuba complained to the United States earlier this week about alleged distribution of more than 500 shortwave radios tuned to the U.S. government's Radio Marti station, which is run by Cuban exiles opposed to Fidel Castro's government.

On a Thursday night television show, the Cuban government said the Americans gave the radios to "small, discredited groups that they direct," an apparent reference to dissident organizations here.

During Saturday's speech, which was carried live on state television and radio, Perez Roque also accused the Americans of monitoring Cuban communications. "You cannot tell your girlfriend a secret that they won't find out," he said.

Castro, who stood in the front row of the crowd, did not address the gathering.

Perez Roque said that actions by American officials in Cuba violate diplomatic norms as well as the spirit of the agreement that established the U.S. Interests Section here in 1977 under then-President Jimmy Carter.

"Our patience has limits," Perez Roque said. "We are warning the American diplomats ... that they not believe that we don't know" of their activities.

The U.S. mission performs consular services and otherwise represents American interests in Cuba without full diplomatic relations, which were severed at the height of the Cold War in the early 1960s.

Cuba has always resented the Radio Marti broadcasts from the United States to Cuba, which it views as an attempt by its enemies to undermine the government here. The broadcasts began in 1985 during the administration of then-President Ronald Reagan. Cuba has jammed them in the past.

After toning down its anti-American rhetoric in recent months, Perez Roque and other Cuban officials are adopting increasingly critical language amid moves by Washington that they perceive as hostile.

Perez Roque blamed most of those moves on Otto Reich, the Cuban-born top U.S. diplomat for Latin America.

Reich, who immigrated to the United States as a teen-ager shortly after the 1959 Cuban revolution, has promised that the Bush administration will not succumb to growing pressure by Congress to ease hard-line American policies toward the island.