By Anita Snow, .c The Associated Press
HAVANA, 25 (AP) - Police detained two of Cuba's best-known opposition leaders Tuesday morning, hours before they were to hold a meeting of dissidents, a leading human rights activist said.
Oswaldo Paya Sardinas and Hector Palacios were taken from their homes at around 6 a.m., said Elizardo Sanchez, president of the Cuban Commission of Human Rights and Reconciliation. Sanchez said he had been among those invited to a meeting of 20 dissident figures scheduled for that afternoon at
Palacios' home.
Palacios' wife, Gisela Delgado, was detained several hours after her husband, Sanchez said.
Paya is leader of the Christian Liberation Movement in Cuba. Palacios founded the Democratic Solidarity Party and oversees a study center for the opposition movements on the island.
Both have earned international recognition. They met with visiting Illinois Gov. George Ryan in October and with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar when he traveled to Cuba for the Ibero-American summit in November.
``We are hoping that this is a short-term detention,'' said Sanchez, who also ranks among the island's best-known opposition figures.
Cuba's communist government refers to dissidents as ``counterrevolutionaries'' and generally does not comment on such detentions. Foreign Ministry spokesman Alejandro Gonzalez, among the few government officials authorized to respond to press inquiries, did not answer phone calls to his office
Tuesday afternoon.
Sanchez said he believes Cuba's communist leadership is taking advantage of interest in the international custody dispute involving 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez to crack down on opponents.
``I think that the government is using its political success in that case to neutralize the opposition, which really is quite small,'' he said.
Sanchez himself spent many years in Cuban prisons. His commission issues a report on civil rights every six months along with a list of people it considers to be imprisoned for political reasons.
In a report earlier this month, Sanchez's organization listed 344 people it said were fined, arrested or imprisoned for political reasons during the last half of 1999, up from 324 during the first half. About 20 percent of those people could be classified as prisoners of conscience under
criteria established by international human rights groups, Sanchez said.
The Cuban government says it holds no political prisoners, only common criminals.
AP-NY-01-25-00 1726EST
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