By Frank Bajak, Associated Press

MEXICO CITY (AP) --- Four days before the pope's arrival in Cuba, the communist island nation had not issued visas for at least 20 foreign journalists as of Saturday.

Pope John Paul II's visit to the Caribbean island begins Wednesday. Cuban officials said Saturday that more than 3,000 foreign journalists had received visas, including three from the U.S. government's Voice of America.

"I am not going to tell you how many visas we did not approve but look around, everyone is here. All the networks are here,'' Cuba's international press director, Frank Gonzalez, told The Associated Press in Havana.

Among those who had not received visas as of Saturday were 16 journalists at the Miami Herald, and its sister Spanish-language publication, El Nuevo Herald. At least one Mexican and three Argentine journalists also had not received visas.

"I think it is sad and outrageous that the Cubans feel they have to restrict coverage of an event as historic as this,'' said Juan O. Tamayo, a senior reporter and former foreign editor at the Herald.

The Herald reported Saturday that more than 60 reporters, more than half from the Cuban exile stronghold of Miami, had not been granted Cuban visas.

The Cuban government has regularly complained that coverage of the communist state by The Miami Herald has been too negative.

The last time a Miami Herald reporter was granted a journalist's visa was April 1996, Tamayo said.

Many foreign media organizations complain that Castro retaliates against those who file what his government considers negative reports from the island, frequently expelling reporters who do not obtain journalist visas and denying future access.

Rather than risk rejection journalist visas have been denied, some news media send reporters to Cuba on tourist visas, the case recently for El Nuevo Herald and one of Argentina's leading newspapers, La Nacion.

Cuba requires foreign reporters to apply for journalists' visas and to be accredited before they work in the country. In the past, Cuba has expelled foreign journalists after discovering they were working on tourist visas.

La Nacion had a reporter and photographer denied visas for the papal trip. The newspaper's managing editor, Fernan Saguier, said Saturday that three of his reporters who entered Cuba on tourist visas produced reports that upset Cuban officials.

"They told us they were disgusted by the coverage, that it did not reflect Cuban realities,'' Saguier said by telephone from Buenos Aires. The stories in dispute "reflected how closed the country is, how the people aren't allowed to leave, and about the poverty they live in,'' he said.

The other Argentine reporter who was not granted a visa is from the country's largest newspaper, Clarin.

On Saturday, the Mexico City newspaper Reforma said Cuba had not issued a visa for journalist Cesar Romero Jacobo, who reported in September on visits to Cuba by the late Mexican drug kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes.

© 1998 Associated Press