From staff and wire reports. CNN, February 19, 19100. Web posted at: 11:00 p.m. EST (0400 GMT)
WASHINGTON -- Cuba's government has rejected a U.S. request that an unnamed Cuban diplomat leave the United States within seven days because of possible ties to a Cuban-born U.S. immigration official suspected of espionage.
A senior U.S. administration official said the expulsion was connected to the arrest of Mariano Faget, the Immigration and Naturalization Service official in Miami who was charged Friday with violating the federal Espionage Act and making false statements.
James Foley, a State Department spokesman, said the U.S. asked for the diplomat's expulsion after the FBI presented evidence that showed "actions by the Cuban diplomat were incompatible with his diplomatic status."
In Cuba, a government statement condemned the U.S. espionage charges and the explusion request as a "desperate and spectacular maneuver."
The statement said, "The Cuban government will not withdraw any officer." It added that Cuba would urge that "this compatriot, so vilely accused, remain in United States territory to give testimony and demonstrate the total falseness of this accusation, whatever the consequences
may be."
The statement went on to say, "Never in 22 years has the Cuban interests section in Washington carried out intelligence activities in the United States."
Statement read to rally in Cuba
The statement was read to a rally in Baragua, in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba. The rally was attended by more than 20,000 people, including President Fidel Castro and senior government officials.
An earlier statement from the Cuban interests section in Washington offered no comment on the ordered expulsion but said the allegation of Cuban espionage is a "colossal slander." It said the purpose of the Cuban mission is to promote better relations between the United States and
Cuba.
The statement from the interests section said it is no coincidence that the espionage accusations are being leveled at a time when the custody battle over Elian Gonzalez is reaching a critical stage. Court proceedings are scheduled in the coming week in the case involving efforts by the
6-year-old Cuban boy's Miami relatives to forestall an INS order that he be returned to his father in Cuba.
Elian was one of three survivors of a shipwrecked immigration attempt that took the lives of his mother and 10 other people in November.
State Department withholds name
Foley would not give the diplomat's name or position. He said only that the person enjoys "diplomatic immunity" and that the U.S. government expected the man to leave the country within seven days.
Foley said Charles Shapiro, the U.S. coordinator for Cuban affairs, called Felix Wilson, the acting head of the Cuban interests section in Washington, to the State Department to request that a member of the interests section leave.
Authorities said Friday that Faget had contacts with Cuban intelligence officials, including a diplomat from the Cuban interests section. Agents secretly watched as Faget met with that diplomat for two hours at a Miami airport bar February 19, 1999, and they videotaped his meeting with a Cuban
agent at a Miami hotel in October, the FBI said in an affidavit.
Faget, a supervisor in the Miami INS office, was arrested Thursday, after he became the target of an FBI sting operation. Authorities said they fed Faget a false story on February 11 that an important Cuban intelligence officer was planning to defect to the United States, and they asked him to
prepare asylum papers.
Minutes later, according to authorities, Faget called a Cuban-born New York businessman with alleged ties to Cuban intelligence and told him the name of the supposed defector.
Authorities said they had been investigating Faget for a year and that he may have been passing on classified information about Cuban defectors for some time. They also said they were uncertain about the effects of his alleged espionage, whether any Cubans were prevented from defecting, for
example.
Faget appeared in court on Friday and was ordered held until a bail hearing on February 24.
U.S. diplomat expelled from Cuba in '96
This is believed to be the first Cuban diplomat asked to leave the U.S. since 1996. Then, Jose Luis Ponce, the Cuban mission spokesman, was asked to leave in retaliation for the expulsion of a U.S. diplomat from Havana.
In August 1996, Cuba expelled Robin Meyer, a diplomat with the political- economic section of the U.S. mission in Havana. Her primary responsibility was human rights.
Cuba said Meyer had carried out activities "incompatible with her diplomatic status."
White House Correspondent Kelly Wallace, the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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