Reprinted from Caribbean Net News
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HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): Cuban dissidents will start a landmark democracy conference in Havana on Friday, publicly defying communist President Fidel Castro who claims the opposition meeting is being funded by the United States.
Castro has slammed the National Congress organized by prominent dissidents Marta Beatriz Roque, Felix Bonne and Rene Gomez.
The president this week accused the United States of bankrolling the gathering and lashed the organizers as "mercenaries".
Cuba also stopped two Polish lawmakers from entering the country on Tuesday to observe the meeting.
The United States has sent "millions more to foment destabilization, conspiracy, domestic subversion," Castro said on official television Monday. "Do these mercenaries think we are here sucking our thumbs? That we are idiots?
"They just may think so. They're wrong," warned Castro, 78, who has led the Caribbean country of 11 million since 1959.
Roque, 59, an economist and the only woman jailed in a crackdown two years ago in which 75 dissidents were tried and sentenced to lengthy jail terms, told AFP her Assembly to Promote Civil Society -- an umbrella group of some 360 organizations -- expected 200-400 people to work on plans for life after Castro.
Roque was freed from jail due to health problems, and swiftly went about organizing the National Congress.
"We are optimistic about what the results will be," she told AFP ahead of the two day meeting in Rio Verde, outside Havana, on Bonne's farm where about a dozen workers were clearing bushes and putting finishing touches on bathrooms and a dining area for the event.
"We do not know what the regime's reaction will be to this project, but we are not about to give up now, and we are ready to suffer the consequences," said Roque, who has drawn the wrath of some other Cuban dissidents for sponsoring the event.
Oswaldo Paya, of the Christian Liberation Movement, said he would not attend the meeting, and charged it was a fraud set up by government agents, and that Roque and others were working with them. "Communist governments are specialists at setting up lies," he said.
Roque did not respond directly to the allegations.
"Our objective is to unite the opposition, not to divide it," she said, charging that some of those who planned to attend from outside Havana had been harassed by government officials to try to stop them from taking part.
The National Congress would be the first meeting of its kind aimed at launching democratic transition plans. A different group tried in vain in 1996 to organize a similar event.
Roque maintains this meeting has been financed by Cuban exiles and dissidents on the island, making it possible for organizers to acquire refrigerators, plastic chairs and construction materials.
In Washington, in a resolution adopted unanimously Tuesday, the US Senate expressed support for the Cuban meeting and lauded "all those courageous individuals who continue to advance liberty and democracy for the Cuban people."
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