Cuban President Offers Dissidents-Spies Swap, U.S. Refuses

December 18, 2008 9:30 p.m. EST

Washington, DC (AHN) - The U.S. State Department on Thursday rejected an offer by Cuban President Raul Castro to exchange political dissidents jailed in Cuba for five Cuban spies imprisoned in Florida.

"The issue of political prisoners held against their will, merely for making peaceful protests, is independent of the case of the five spies tried and convicted under due process of the US judicial system," the department's deputy spokesman Robert Wood told Agence France-Presse.

Earlier Thursday, Castro bared the swap offer to reporters in Brasilia, Brazil after meeting Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in his first series of overseas trips since replacing his brother Fidel Castro as leader of Cuba in February.

"Let them (U.S.) tell us, we'll send them over there with families and all. Let them return our five heroes. It is gesture from both sides," Castro said, according to AFP.

An aerodrome construction engineer, a pilot and three other men from Cuba were arrested for espionage in 1998. They admitted monitoring Florida-based anti-Castro groups to prevent terrorist attacks on Cuba. A federal court in Miami convicted the five for spying and sentenced them to long prison terms in 2001.

In Cuba, more than 200 political dissidents are in jail and Washington has been calling for their release and the restoration of democracy by Havana before lifting years of economic sanction on the Caribbean island nation.