With so much international news coverage of the law, Ricardo Alarcon said he wanted to ensure that lawmakers in other countries didn't get the wrong idea.
``Some (news) agency dispatches said that the death penalty was contemplated, that even mere intentions would be condemned, that even the foreign press was among the supposed victims,'' Alarcon wrote in the letter sent Tuesday. ``Nothing of the like was ever in there.''
The Cuban parliament recently passed the ``Law for the Protection of the National Independence and the Economy of Cuba,'' a crackdown on dissidents. The same week, lawmakers revised the penal code to expand the death penalty and lengthen sentences for common crimes.
The timing of the two measures created confusion among some media outlets, which erroneously interpreted the changes in the criminal code as applying to dissidents.
Both measures created an international stir last month when they were approved by lawmakers.
The law, aimed especially at ``independent journalists'' that have no ties to any government organization, seeks to punish those who undertake acts deemed to further aggressive U.S. policies toward Cuba, such as the three-decade-old embargo and subsequent moves to strengthen it.
Generally considered political dissidents by the government, those journalists are often in contact with American news organizations based in Miami. Some regularly provide information to the U.S. government's Radio Marti, whose stated purpose is to help force a change in Fidel Castro's government.
The law comes at a time that Cuba feels under heavy attack from its neighbor to the north. In recent days, it has railed in the government press against dissidents, foreign journalists and a Salvadoran on trial for terrorism, accusing all of working with the American government and Miami-based exiles to undercut the communist system.
Shortly after the law was passed, four of Cuba's best-known dissidents went on trial in a closed courtroom, charged with sedition for encouraging Cubans not to vote and urging Cuban exiles to tell their relatives on the island to undertake acts of civil disobedience. They are also charged with discouraging foreign businesses from investing money in the island nation.
The verdicts from the March 1 trial are pending.
Unlike at the dissidents' trial, the government is allowing media access to another trial considered of national security importance -- that of Raul Ernesto Cruz Leon, a Salvadoran charged with a string of 1997 hotel explosions that killed one man and injured 11 others, including seven foreigners.
The prosecution is emphasizing the alleged involvement of the U.S. government and Cuban exiles in the attacks.
``Due to the North American hostility, the situation of Cuba is extremely peculiar,'' Alarcon wrote lawmakers around the world. ``Against us, they have shown all of the varieties: economic war, invasion, mercenary activity, threat of nuclear attack, sabotage, attempts to assassinate various Cuban leaders and a long list of aggressive actions.
``Faced with those realities, we can do nothing less than defend ourselves,'' he said.
© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press