By Anthony Boadle, Dec 23
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States Wednesday ordered three Cuban diplomats at the United Nations to leave the country for allegedly running a spy ring in Florida, U.S. officials said.
The three diplomats were given until next week to pack their bags after the Federal Bureau of Investigations found they were connected to a network of Cuban spies uncovered in Florida, the officials said.
``It is safe to assume that one or more of these diplomats in New York were case officers, paymasters or couriers,'' an official in Washington told Reuters.
There is no known precedent of a Cuban spy network being dismantled in the United States.
The unexpected throw-back to the Cold War started when 10 people were arrested in Florida on Sept. 13 and accused of spying on U.S. military bases and Cuban exile groups for Cuba's Communist government.
It was the largest known round-up of agents from Havana since President Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution turned relations with Washington hostile.
State Department spokesman James Rubin said the three Cuban diplomats were told to depart ``for activities incompatible with their status as members of the U.N. mission.''
``This action was taken as a result of evidence developed during an exhaustive investigation by the FBI,'' he said.
Two other Cuban U.N. diplomats implicated by the probe had already left the country since September, Rubin said.
``We cannot accept violations of U.S. laws and endangerment of our national security interests,'' Rubin said.
In Havana, Cuban Foreign Ministry officials said they were aware of the U.S. expulsions but had no immediate comment.
Cuba's tightly-controlled state media carried no immediate reports on the ordering out of the Cuban diplomats, so most Cubans were unaware of the news.
A U.S. diplomatic source in New York said the three Cuban diplomats were given until Monday to leave the United States.
The source identified the diplomats as Eduardo Martinez Borbonet, a first secretary; Roberto Azanza Paez, a third secretary; and Gonzalo Fernandez Garay, an attache.
The U.S. source in New York said a note was sent to the Cuban U.N. mission Monday giving it 24 hours to respond. No reply was received and a second U.S. note was sent early Wednesday giving the Cubans until Monday to leave.
The 10 people -- including two married couples -- awaiting trial in Florida were accused of gathering information on U.S. military installations for Havana and trying to infiltrate anti-Castro exile groups.
On the surface, the eight men and two women led ordinary working lives in south Florida's large Hispanic community.
But U.S. officials in Miami said the group had tried to infiltrate Southcom, the United State's military headquarters in Miami for the southern hemisphere, and had planted an agent at the U.S. Navy's Boca Chica Naval Air Base in Key West.
Two Cuban-American politicians said they hoped the actions signaled the start of a U.S. counterattack against Havana.
Republican U.S. Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen also took a swipe at the Clinton administration, which they accuse of not being tough enough in its policy toward Cuban leader Fidel Castro's communist government.
``We are optimistic we have not seen the last of these arrests or expulsions,'' Ros-Lehtinen told a news conference.
``The evidence is overwhelming, and it was high time the administration finally stopped looking the other way, which is what they've been doing for years, and start really looking into this information,'' she said.
The Pentagon said earlier this year, before the arrests, that it no longer considered Cuba a military threat.
U.S. officials say several alleged agents had joined Cuban exile groups posing as dissidents.
One piloted a boat toward Cuban waters in a protest flotilla organized by the Miami-based Democracy Movement, while another was a member of Brothers to the Rescue, the exile group at the center of an international furor in February 1996 after Cuban MiGs shot down two of its planes, killing four people.
The 10 were charged with acting as agents of the Cuban government, conspiring to defraud the U.S. government and conspiring to gather and deliver defense information to aid a foreign government. If found guilty, they would face life imprisonment and fines of up to $750,000.
The last time a Cuban diplomat was expelled was in 1995, when three members of the mission were expelled for fighting with anti-Castro protesters in New York. One Cuban was expelled in 1992 for actions incompatible with his diplomatic status.
``We hope there will not be tit-for-tat expulsions,'' a U.S. State Department official said.
23:53 12-23-98
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