HAVANA, Dec 28 (Reuters) - Cuba, the target of U.S.-funded radio and TV programmes hostile to its one-party political system, is retransmitting Chinese radio programmes to the American continent, Communications Minister Silvano Colas said on Tuesday.

Colas told Cuban journalists that two transmitters on the island nation were broadcasting eight hours of Radio China International programming each day.

The programmes -- in Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese and English -- are captured by satellite and rebroadcast via short wave, the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina quoted Colas as saying.

Colas said no other communication facility on the island was linked to Chinese government interests.

Prensa Latina said he also categorically denied ``any other use of a military kind.''

The denial was an apparent response to allegations this year in a Miami newspaper that China had established military communications facilities in Cuba.

Cuba does allow Russia to operate an electronic communications and intelligence-gathering facility on its soil. Located in Lourdes outside Havana, it is the largest operated by Moscow in the Western Hemisphere.

Colas said Chinese companies were helping Cuba modernise its telephone system.

China's SINOTECH and Great Dragon Telecommunications, in partnership with the Cuban telephone company ETECSA and another Cuban firm, Coprefil, have installed digital telephone communications on Cuba's Isle of Youth.

Colas said Cuba continues to jam broadcasts by TV Marti, a U.S. government-funded station created in 1990 to criticise Cuba's President Fidel Castro and his one-party socialist rule.

The minister condemned TV Marti as an ``act of aggression'' by Washington against Havana.

Colas added that Radio Marti, an older U.S. government- financed radio station that also transmits anti-communist programming to the island, was more difficult to jam.

But the minister said that because of Cuba's electronic defences, Radio Marti was blocked across most of the island.

Many ordinary Cubans say they regularly listen to Radio Marti, which suggests the station is still quite widely received.

12:35 12-28-99

Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.

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