A press meeting called by Cuban dissidents was broken up without violence by government supporters in what may be Havana's newest strategy in dealing with coverage in the media.

BY ANITA SNOW
Associated Press

HAVANA - Government supporters commandeered a news media gathering called by dissidents Friday morning, using impassioned speeches and shouts of ''Viva Fidel Castro!'' to draw journalists' attention away from their opponents.

The rapid, nonviolent breakup of the morning gathering outside the European Union's mission in Havana marked a new strategy in the government's recent handling of the international media's coverage of public appearances by dissidents.

While three pro-Castro militants loudly complained on camera to international reporters about the dissidents, referring to them as mercenaries and worms, the opposition leaders who called the media out quietly slipped away.

The whole event lasted less than a half-hour.

''Well, we believe in democracy and that people can think differently,'' well-known dissident leader Martha Beatriz Roque told reporters before she and two other opposition leaders left the area while cameras and microphones focused increasingly on the government supporters who showed up to complain.

''We are really tired of these sellouts supported by the United States,'' said Lázaro Enrique Suarez, who described himself as a civilian government worker who happened to be in the area when the crowd formed outside the mission.

Suarez and two other men formed the core of the pro-Castro militants, who were later joined by five or six others, including several who displayed a red, white and blue Cuban flag.

Roque called international journalists late Thursday about the Friday morning event, described as a meeting between European Commission representatives and relatives of dissidents imprisoned in a recent pair of public protests.

The majority of the prisoners' relatives, as well as Roque and fellow dissident leaders Felix Bonne and Angel Polanco, were not allowed inside the mission. Roque said just five relatives of two of the prisoners were let in.

The EU mission released a declaration later in the day saying the meeting with relatives of political prisoners was not of a political nature, and was canceled once officials saw what was taking place outside.

Cuban authorities were enraged by the two earlier public protests and the news coverage of them. In both cases, they were broken up by government supporters in much more aggressive ways, with shouting, shoving, the surrounding of dissidents' homes and some arrests. Nevertheless, no injuries were reported in either event.

President Castro referred to the protests during his Rebellion Day speech last week, defending counter-protests. Castro said supporters will respond likewise ``as long as traitors and mercenaries go one millimeter beyond what the revolutionary people . . . are willing to permit.''