BY ALFONSO CHARDY
 achardy@herald.com

 Federal agents are expected to arrest today two more alleged members of a now-dismantled Cuban spy ring that saw five of its
 operatives convicted in Miami federal court in June, two Justice Department officials told The Herald on Thursday.

 The Justice officials, who requested anonymity, declined to name the suspects or say what they will be charged with.

 U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis and Hector Pesquera, the FBI's top agent in Miami, have scheduled a 10:30 a.m. news conference for
 today.

 Aloyma Sanchez, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Miami, said a news conference will take place at FBI
 headquarters and the subject will be related to Cuba. But Sanchez would not comment further.

 FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela declined comment Thursday evening.

 The arrests come almost two months after Pesquera, the special agent in charge, told The Herald that more spy suspects
 eventually would be arrested.

 ``There are going to be other people picked up on this matter here,'' Pesquera said in early July. ``We haven't finished our
 investigation, and I am very confident that additional people will be charged in this intelligence network operation.''

 In June, a federal jury convicted five men -- Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, René González (no relation
 to Fernando) and Antonio Guerrero -- of espionage conspiracy. Evidence showed the spies monitored U.S. military installations
 and Cuban exile groups for the purpose of relaying secrets to Fidel Castro's government in Havana.

 The lead defendant, Hernández, was convicted of conspiring to commit murder in connection with the shoot-down by a Cuban MiG
 fighter of two Brothers to the Rescue planes on Feb. 24, 1996. Four Miami men died in the incident.

 It's unclear whether the new suspects are high-level ``illegal'' intelligence officers who reported to Havana command and control
 centers, such as Hernández, Labañino and Fernando González, or lower-level agents who reported to the ``illegal officers,'' such as
 René González and Guerrero.

 In July, Pesquera said there was a third category of spy suspect that he labeled ``collaborators.''

 The five men convicted in June were arrested in 1998 along with five others who later pleaded guilty. They were members of the
 so-called La Red Avispa, or the Wasp Network.

 At the time of the arrests, federal investigators said between 200 and 300 Cuban spies were believed to have operated in the Miami
 area for decades.

 At least four suspects eluded federal agents and returned to Cuba before the arrests.

 One of them was Juan Pablo Roque, a pilot who had infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue. He secretly returned to Cuba on the eve of
 the deadly Brothers shoot-down in 1996.

 Roque reappeared in Havana shortly after the shoot-down disclosing that he had infiltrated Brothers.

 Relatives of the four Brothers fliers killed in the shoot-down and Brothers leader José Basulto, who survived the episode, have
 pushed for the indictments of Castro and at least eight other people suspected of having had direct participation in the incident.

 Lewis, the interim U.S. attorney, and Pesquera have not said whether they plan to indict Castro or any of his aides in the case, but
 they say Hernández's conviction took them a step closer to that possibility because it demonstrated that the Cuban government
 ``hatched'' the murder conspiracy.

 Herald staff writers Gail Epstein and David Green contributed to this report.