Cuban agents jailed 30 dissidents in the last 10 days and chased away two others who tried to stage a public protest in Havana on Wednesday, cracking down on opposition activities as the Ibero-American summit approaches.

One of the men driven away from the highly unusual gathering at Dolores Park in Havana managed to mutter, ``I have a right to speak, before a pro-government mob chased him away, the French news agency AFP reported.

Security agents also appear to have tipped foreign journalists to brief leaves from prison granted Wednesday to three of Cuba's top dissidents, perhaps in an attempt to distract attention from the incident at Dolores Park.

The arrests, harassments and surprising prison leaves added to the commotion surrounding the two-day summit of heads of government from Latin America, Spain and Portugal that begins in Havana on Monday.

``This is the biggest wave of repression so far this year, said Elizardo Sanchez, head of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and Reconciliation. ``The government has now put in march its powerful ability to silence and tie up the opposition.''

Dissidents have vowed to take advantage of the summit meeting to air their demands for democracy, while President Fidel Castro has threatened to crack down on any ``counterrevolutionary activities.

Ten of those arrested in the last few days were released after they were warned to stay home during the summit, according to Sanchez.

In addition to those arrested, another dozen or so dissidents from around the provinces were warned to stay away from Havana while the foreign leaders are in the Cuban capital, Sanchez added in a telephone interview form Havana.

The biggest test is expected Friday, when about 90 opposition and human rights groups plan to meet in a Havana suburb for what they hope will be the largest dissident meeting in 40 years of Castro rule.

Security agents gave a hint of what those groups can expect when they managed to thwart the march planned for Wednesday by the Lawton Human Rights Foundation between two parks in Havana's Lawton neighborhood.

Several dozen men and women in civilian clothes crowded the usually empty Dolores Park from the early morning hours, chatting and dancing to music from a loudspeaker turned up to full volume, AFP reported.

Some young men in the crowd carried hand-held radios, the news agency reported, and the crowd swelled later in the day with the arrival of several hundred students from a high school nearby.

As some in the crowd shouted pro-government slogans, a man about 50 years old was heard to mutter ``I too am Cuban, and I have a right to speak. But he was run off by the mob and sought refuge in a nearby grocery store, AFP reported.

One hour later, a second man identified himself as a member of the Lawton Foundation and tried to engage members of the crowd in a discussion about the government, but was also driven off.

The first man was later taken out of the grocery store and driven away in a Lada car, AFP reported. Ladas, Soviet-made versions of Fiat vehicles, are known in Cuba as the vehicles of the secret political police.

Secret police agents were also apparently behind a series of telephone calls made to foreign journalists Wednesday saying that jailed dissidents Marta Beatriz Roque, Rene Gomez Manzano and Felix Bonne would be freed. In fact, the jailed dissidents were given a few hours of home leave before they were returned to prison.

AFP reported that one of its journalists in Havana saw Roque, 54, as three security agents delivered her to the home of a niece in the Havana suburb of Mantilla for a six-hour visit.

The security agents told the news agency that home leaves had also been given to Bonne and Gomez, although that could not be confirmed. The agents made no mention of a fourth jailed dissident, Vladimiro Roca.

The four were convicted of sedition in a closed-door trial after they issued a manifesto, The Homeland Belongs to Us All, scathingly critical of the Cuban Communist Party's monopoly on power.