HAVANA (Reuters) -- Cuba on Monday put on trial for "terrorism" a
                  second Salvadoran man accused of participating in a bombing campaign that
                  Havana says was planned and funded in the United States.

                  The state is seeking a 30-year prison sentence for Otto Rene Rodriguez
                  Llerena, who is charged with setting off a small bomb in Havana's Melia
                  Cohiba hotel in August 1997, and bringing explosives into the country a year
                  later.

                  "The prosecution accuses the defendant of two very serious crimes of
                  terrorism, although fortunately there were no victims," state prosecutor
                  Enrique Nunez Grillo said before the trial opened at 9 a.m. (1400 GMT) in
                  the colonial-era La Cabana fortress perched on a hill over Havana Bay.

                  Rodriguez's case follows last week's high-profile terrorism trial of another
                  Salvadoran man, Raul Ernesto Cruz Leon, who confessed to six 1997 bomb
                  attacks on tourist installations.

                  Those explosions killed an Italian tourist and injured 11 other people. The
                  state has asked that Cruz be executed -- Cuba's highest penalty for
                  terrorism, which is carried out by firing squad -- and a verdict is due in
                  coming days.

                  Havana is using both trials to present evidence it says proves the powerful
                  U.S.-based Cuban exile group, the Cuban American National Foundation
                  (CANF), was behind the attacks against the Caribbean island's tourism
                  industry.

                  The state alleges the CANF was responsible -- via admitted Cuban exile
                  commando Luis Posada Carriles -- for the recruitment, training and funding
                  of a network of Central American mercenaries hired for the attacks.

                  The Miami-based CANF, fierce opponents of President Fidel Castro and
                  his communist system, denied any links to the violence after being accused
                  by Havana last year.

                  In his first public comments on the Salvadorans' trials, Castro on the
                  weekend blamed Washington for the bombing campaign. "The U.S.
                  government takes responsibility, either through action, omission or conscious
                  intent, in the terrorist acts carried out by mercenaries in Cuba," he told a
                  closed-door local journalists' meeting, according to state media reports.

                  That line was echoed by state newspaper Trabajadores, which said in its
                  Monday edition that since the 1960s, the CIA had been funding "common
                  criminals and traffickers in international terrorism."

                  The terrorism cases are the latest in a string of recent high-profile trials in
                  Cuba.

                  As part of a tough response to rising crime, Cuban authorities have
                  sentenced to death several murderers, including the killers of two Italian
                  tourists. A number of convicted pimps have received stiff jail sentences.

                  The island's four best-known dissidents were also tried recently for allegedly
                  inciting "sedition," in a controversial, closed-door case that provoked
                  widespread foreign criticism. The verdict in that trial, seen as a test case for
                  Cuba's internal opposition, is due by mid-week.

                  Prosecutor Nunez said the case against Rodriguez would prove a direct link
                  with Posada. "He recruited him in Salvadoran territory in the middle of
                  1997, prepared him, and trained him in a professional, careful way so he
                  would come here to plant these explosives," he said.

                  In last week's case, the defendant Cruz denied a direct link with Posada,
                  saying he was hired through another Salvadoran, Antonio Francisco Chavez
                  Abarca.

                  Cuba is also holding two Guatemalans, who are expected to be tried later
                  this year for alleged terrorism offenses as part of the Central American
                  network allegedly set up by the CANF through Posada.

                   Copyright 1999 Reuters.