BY ANITA SNOW
  Associated Press

  HAVANA - In Cuba's first comments about a U.S. intelligence analyst who confessed to spying for the communist island for 16 years, Foreign Minister
  Felipe Pérez Roque on Friday expressed ''profound respect and admiration'' for the convicted spy.

  Ana Belén Montes was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years in prison on espionage charges.

  Answering questions on a live Internet forum, Pérez Roque said he hoped someday ``it will be unnecessary for men and women of the moral stature of
  Ana Belén Montes and of the five Cuban heroes -- also unjustly imprisoned in the United States -- to sacrifice their lives, their families and their personal
  interests.''

  The five Cubans Pérez Roque referred to were sentenced in Miami last year on espionage charges. Cuba has lionized them as heroes, saying they were
  merely trying to gather information to protect the island against terrorist attacks by exiles in South Florida.

  At her sentencing hearing on Wednesday, Montes decried American policies toward Fidel Castro's government as ``cruel and unfair.''

  Montes, 45, had worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency as one of the Pentagon's most senior experts on Cuba's military.

  Pérez Roque wrote Friday on the Cuban government website that he felt ``profound respect and admiration for Ms. Ana Belén Montes.''

  ''Her actions were moved by ethics and by an admirable sense of justice,'' he said.

  In accepting Montes' sentence under a plea agreement this week, U.S. prosecutors accused her of giving Cuba secrets so sensitive they could not be
  described publicly.

  American prosecutors believed Montes wasn't motivated by money, because she received only nominal amounts to cover expenses.

  During Friday's Internet forum, Pérez Roque said Cuba had not paid Belén for her services.