Raul Rivero, head of the independent Cuban news agency Cubapress, said Thursday from Havana that government security officials told him that he, his fellow workers at Cuba Press and dissident leader Oswaldo Paya would be among the first people prosecuted under a new law that calls for up to 20-year sentences for dissidents.

``I received the direct threat that when the law goes into effect I would be on the list of people to whom it would be applied,'' Rivero said in a phone interview with Radio Marti. ``They also mentioned people who are not journalists, like Oswaldo Paya.''

Rivero said he was taken to a house maintained by State Security in the Siboney neighborhood of Havana, where two security officials were waiting for him.

``I wasn't arrested. It was a conversation of more than three hours, which we carried on decently and even cordially,'' Rivero said. ``We talked about the new law [and] the work of independent journalism -- they with their points of view and I with mine.''

Rivero said the officials were emphatic in their warning that the work of independent journalists and opposition groups will no longer be tolerated.