BY CHRIS GAITHER AND SANDRA MARQUEZ GARCIA
smarquez@herald.com

Two missing Cuban doctors, abducted by armed soldiers in Zimbabwe last week and nearly shipped home against their will after requesting political asylum, were located Wednesday by United Nations officials in a detention camp outside the nation's capital.

Authorities in Zimbabwe had denied knowledge of their whereabouts for days, but they finally allowed a U.N. representative to meet with the Cuban physicians for more than an hour after their case aroused international concern for their safety.

Leonel Córdova Rodríguez, 31, and Noris Peña Martínez, 25, were unharmed and being kept in separate cells at Goromonzi Remand Center, about 18 miles from Harare, a U.N. spokesman said.

Officials in Zimbabwe pledged to release the doctors ``shortly'' for a fast-track hearing on their refugee status, which could come as early as today.

But diplomats and a Harvard University expert on Zimbabwe warned that the pair were not yet out of harm's way. Before the doctors can be resettled in a third country, they must win refugee status from Zimbabwe -- a close ally of Cuba.

``Our role in this process is to safeguard the procedures, but the decision itself is made by the government,'' said Dominik Bartsch, a U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman in Lusaka, Zambia, whose office oversees Zimbabwe. ``We'll know our next step when we have a decision.''

Robert I. Rotberg, a Harvard professor who has studied southern Africa for 40 years, said the doctors stand a slim chance of getting that recognition from Zimbabwe because of President Robert Mugabe's longtime political friendship with Fidel Castro. He predicted the government will allow the doctors to travel to another country so Mugabe can sidestep the international spotlight and the ire of Castro.

``It would be much simpler to just bundle them out of the country,'' Rotberg said.

Mugabe spokesman George Charamba alluded to that predicament in a statement to the Associated Press in Harare. ``We cannot allow this country to be used as a stepping stone for people seeking asylum in another country,'' Charamba said.

Rotberg said the paper trail left by the doctors probably saved them from deportation to Cuba, where they almost certainly would have been jailed. Peña managed to slip a three-page account of the abduction Friday to an Air France employee in Johannesburg, South Africa, where Zimbabwean and Cuban agents tried to force them aboard a Paris-bound flight with a connection to Havana. Air France refused to board the doctors and they were returned to Harare.

In Washington, the Senate foreign relations committee took steps toward enacting the first sanctions for Zimbabwe's treatment of the Cuban doctors. The committee approved a bill Wednesday that would cut off all U.S. assistance to Zimbabwe and suspend debt reduction until democracy is established.

Committee spokesman Marc Thiessen, a staffer for U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, said the bill -- already in the works because of a breakdown of law and order in Zimbabwe -- was accelerated following reports of the Cuban doctors' abduction.

Mina Fernández, a second cousin of Peña who owns the Primor Bridals shop in Coral Gables, said she was relieved that her relative had been found unharmed.

``It's an assurance to know that she is well,'' Fernández said. ``Even if she is in prison there, she is not in Cuba. We think with the help of everyone, she will soon be free.''

On Wednesday, Fernández provided The Herald with copies of two e-mails Peña sent to Miami relatives from Zimbabwe. In a message dated May 26 -- two days after the doctors first approached the Canadian Embassy for asylum -- Peña said she had taken a ``decisive step'' in her life by deserting the Cuban doctors' mission. She said she and a colleague were under the protection of the United Nations and she had approached U.S. diplomats to discuss her case.

``Today I went to the U.S. Embassy and they seemed interested in the case,'' Peña wrote in Spanish.

A Clinton administration official could not confirm Peña's visit to the U.S. Embassy because of the time difference with Zimbabwe.

Herald translator Renato Pérez contributed to this report.