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

United Nations officials have asked authorities in Zimbabwe to give them access to two asylum-seeking Cuban doctors believed to be in police custody in that country, but the government continued to deny knowledge of their whereabouts.

In a letter sent Monday to Zimbabwe's foreign minister, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees in Geneva asked to meet with Leonel Córdova Rodríguez, 31, and Noris Peña Martínez, 25, who have not been seen since Friday when armed security agents tried to force them aboard a flight connecting to Havana.

The diplomatic response came as international concern mounted over Zimbabwe's apparent violation of international laws requiring countries to provide due process to asylum seekers.

``We don't know where they are and what is happening to them,'' said Kris Janowski, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency in Geneva. ``It's the responsibility of the Zimbabwean government to give us access.''

In a telephone interview with The Herald, Wayne Bvudzijana, spokesman for Zimbabwe's police force, said he had no information about the doctors' location. ``If they were in our custody, we would confirm that for you,'' he said. ``No reporters know whether they are missing or not.''

But T. William Bango, city editor of the Daily News, Zimbabwe's only independent daily newspaper, said Bvudzijana had admitted otherwise. ``We pressed him further, and he told our crime reporter that they are in a police station but he could not reveal further details.''

News reports of the doctors' abduction came as a shock to Mina Fernández, owner of Primor Bridals shop on Miracle Mile in Coral Gables. Fernández, a second cousin of Peña, has not seen the young doctor for 20 years but maintains close ties with the family in Camagüey, Cuba.

``I am worried because she is a young girl in a foreign country,'' Fernández said. ``She is running the risk that they can kill her.''

Fernández said she planned to get in touch via e-mail with Peña's father, José Ramón Peña, a Cuban doctor on a similar mission in South Africa. She hoped the attempted defection was the beginning of a family reunification.

``Let's hope this can be resolved and see if they can come here,'' she said. ``The entire family would come together to help them.''

A U.S. State Department official who monitors Zimbabwe said the abduction of the Cuban doctors -- yanked from their beds during a predawn raid Friday by two armed soldiers -- was a brazen snub of the refugee agency's mandate to assess their asylum claim.
A FAVOR FOR CUBA

``This was more forceful an intervention than you would expect,'' said the official, noting the long-standing bond between Fidel Castro and Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe. ``The government of Zimbabwe has chosen in this case to do Cuba a favor.''

Zimbabwe is a signatory to the 1951 United Nations convention relating to the status of refugees. The treaty states that no person should be returned to a country where their human rights would be threatened without first having their claim evaluated by ``a satisfactory'' asylum procedure.

``A refugee is not a criminal,'' said Panos Moumtzis, a UNHCR spokesman in Washington. ``A refugee is someone who is fleeing persecution and needs to be treated with respect.''

Córdova and Peña had gone to the Canadian Embassy in Harare, the Zimbabwe capital, to request political asylum May 24. The Canadians referred the pair to the U.N. agency to seek refugee status, which would have allowed them to remain in Zimbabwe while a third country considered taking them in. The refugee agency had scheduled a meeting with the doctors on Friday. They never showed up.
LAST SIGHTING

The doctors were last seen Friday as two Zimbabwean security agents attempted to force them onto a Paris-bound Air France flight in Johannesburg, South Africa, where they were flown after being abducted.

A witness said the airline turned the crying doctors away after they threatened to kill someone if sent back to Cuba. Before disappearing, they managed to slip a handwritten note detailing their abduction to an Air France employee.

Bango, city editor for the Harare newspaper, said the abduction has gone largely unnoticed locally because the country is undergoing its most serious political turmoil in 20 years.

In recent months, squatters backed by President Mugabe ruling party have seized nearly 1,500 white-owned farms, and more than two dozen have been killed in the period leading up to the June 24-25 parliamentary elections.

``The ordinary person is worried about our own political battles,'' Bango said. ``So they are not concerned if a Cuban wants to defect. It is really not the time for debate on international issues.''

But that could change. The Daily News planned to lead today's edition with a front-page story on the doctors' disappearance. ``We are expecting a lot of reaction to our story,'' Bango said.

The U.S. State Department's 1999 Report on Human Rights Practices depicts Zimbabwe as an increasingly rogue state, where the government ``often refuses to abide by court decisions'' and ``members of the security forces commited serious human rights abuses.''

Zimbabwe's close relationship with Cuba, dating back to independence from British colonial rule in 1980, may have been an underlying factor in the decision to ignore United Nations authority in handling the doctors' asylum claim, said the State Department official who monitors Zimbabwe.