BY FRANCES ROBLES

 Cuba's foreign minister took to the airwaves and the Internet this week to publicly
 accuse a Miami developer of helping hatch a plan to gun down Fidel Castro.

 Felipe Pérez Roque appeared Monday night on Cuban television to detail the
 arrests of several men allegedly out to assassinate Castro during last weekend's
 Ibero-American summit in Panama City.

 Among the alleged conspirators who weren't tossed in a Panamanian jail:
 Santiago Alvarez, 59, the Miami developer who once accused Hialeah Mayor Raul
 Martinez of blackmail.

 Pérez Roque's speech, posted on the communist newspaper Granma website,
 listed Alvarez's home address as well as his telephone numbers.

 He ``has played an important role in the organization of the plan,'' Pérez Roque
 said.

 A flabbergasted Alvarez denied it.

 ``I consider it unjust to kill Fidel Castro,'' the Bay of Pigs veteran said. ``I want him
 to live so he can see the damage he has done to our country, so that if he had
 any shame or honor, he could shoot himself.''

 Four men, including three from Miami, were arrested Friday after Castro
 announced that exiles were in Panama to kill him. Hours later, the men were in a
 Panamanian jail.

 Alvarez maintains that the men are his casual friends but that he has no idea why
 Castro agents think he plotted with them.

 The alleged ringleader, Luis Posada Carriles, is an old friend from his Bay of Pigs
 days whom he hasn't seen in decades, Alvarez said. Posada Carriles is an artist
 whose paintings Alvarez sometimes buys.

 ``They don't look that good,'' Alvarez said, acknowledging that he sent Posada
 Carriles money. ``But it's what he lives off.''

 Once the accusation was broadcast and posted on the web, Alvarez's phone rang
 nonstop Tuesday from places as far away as Honduras and Spain. Alvarez said
 the terrorist plot was probably set up by Castro himself to divert attention from
 human rights abuses in Cuba.

 The evidence? Probably planted. Alvarez is a general contractor who lives in a
 majestic home he built on Miami's Belle Meade Island, past two guard gates east
 of Biscayne Boulevard.