A small blast Monday shook Havana's ritzy Melia Cohiba Hotel, the second explosion there in four months and the sixth in a string of bombs whose low power and injury level are strengthening the theory that they're the work of malcontent Cuban troops.

``It was a lot of noise, but there were no injuries,'' said Juan Jose de la Vega, president of Cubanacan, the Cuban firm that owns the brown 20-story tower on Havana's famed Malecon seashore drive.

A spokesman for the Spanish Sol Melia chain in Barcelona, which administers the hotel, confirmed that ``a small explosion'' went off in the lobby at 7:05 a.m., causing ``very light damages and no personal injuries.''

Soldiers kept journalists out of the hotel, but guests contacted by telephone said workers had quickly put up a wood and canvas partition around the damaged area, to the right of the main door and near the check-in desk.

As police dogs sniffed around the area, two hotel employees said security agents had told them the blast was a bomb. But the Sol Melia spokesman said only that Cuban authorities were investigating the explosion.

Sol Melia chairman Gabriel Canaves later told Spain's EFE news agency that the explosion, according to his ``first impression, is that it was the work of a some group or person interested in getting publicity.''

With Monday's blast, half of the unprecedented six bombs confirmed in the past four months have now been placed at the Cohiba, Havana's newest and most luxurious hotel, preferred by rich foreign tourists and business people.

One bomb April 12 heavily damaged the hotel's Ache Discotheque, and a second was found unexploded in a 15th-story planter a few days later. Sol Melia officials say the April 12 blast was the result of a pipe rupture.

The other three took place July 12 at the Nacional and Capri hotels and sometime in early May at an unidentified hotel in the resort town of Varadero. Only three slight injuries have been reported.

The latest blast came on the eve of closing ceremonies for a youth festival that has drawn some 10,000 people to Havana from around the world, although most of them are staying in private homes instead of hotels.

The bombs are believed aimed at undermining tourism, Cuba's largest hard currency earner, expected to bring an estimated $1.7 billion this year. But industry experts say they have not seen any drops in hotel bookings.

Business as usual

``If the bombs continue every so many days, then it could certainly have an impact. This is a very nervous business,'' Miami-based tourism consultant Nicolas Crespo said. ``But so far we have seen no evidence of an impact.''

While the bombs made front pages in Miami, Spain and Mexico, journalists in Canada, London, Rome and Paris say they received little coverage there because of the uncertainty surrounding who placed them.

Cuban officials have repeatedly said they have evidence that the materials and people involved in the bombs ``came from'' the United States but have not made that evidence public. A Cuba-based opposition group's claim of responsibility has been met with widespread skepticism.

But the fact that the bombs continue, despite Cuba's famously tight security system, is strengthening speculation that those responsible are current or retired soldiers or security agents.

``Every day that goes by and no one is arrested, the rumor that it's uniformed people doing this gains strength,'' said a foreigner who lives in Havana. ``You have to know too much to do this and get away with it.''

Growing consensus

Added a European businessman who recently visited Havana: ``There's a growing consensus in Cuba that [the bombs] must be the work of people in the armed forces or the Interior Ministry, ex-military or security, who are tired of Castro.''

Analysts outside Cuba have also speculated that the bombs may be the work of communist hard-liners, acting with or without President Fidel Castro's knowledge to manufacture a crisis, perhaps as an excuse for a crackdown on dissent.

The European businessman, who asked for anonymity, said he had perceived ``a deep sense of paranoia'' among some top Cuban officials during his trip and had picked up unusually public signs of rivalry between others.

The 70-year-old Castro seems to be suffering some sort of ailment that makes him move slowly, and a number of officials he met around the island raised the issue of possible succession problems, the man added.

``They are in just terrible, terrible shape,'' said another recent visitor to the island. ``People are mad at Fidel, at the lack of food, at the heat, at everything.''

Electricity went off in much of downtown Havana on Sunday because of an accidental fire at the Tallapiedra power plant, a facility from the 1930s that has faltered many times this year because of a lack of spare parts.

Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald