By REUTERS

MIAMI (Reuters) - A cartoonist with an apparent grudge against his editor entered the Miami Herald's headquarters on Friday dressed in camouflage and carrying what turned out to be a fake gun, forcing the newspaper to evacuate its offices before he surrendered.

The man, armed with what police first described as an automatic machine pistol but later said was a toy, was identified by employees as Jose Varela, a freelance cartoonist who had worked for the Herald's Spanish-language sister publication, El Nuevo Herald.

He surrendered to police after a three-hour standoff, during which he trashed the office of the El Nuevo Herald editor on the otherwise deserted sixth floor, police said.

Miami Police spokesman Delrish Moss said Varela apparently had "a beef with a particular editor there.''

Police Chief John Timoney initially said he carried "some kind of automatic machine pistol'' with 30 rounds of ammunition, but police later told the Herald and Miami TV stations the gun turned out to be a plastic and metal toy.

Miami Herald Executive Editor Tom Fiedler said the man apparently believed the newspaper was not being properly run.

El Nuevo reporter Rui Ferreira said in an Internet Web log that he had spoken to the gunman at the start of the siege and was told, ``You are speaking to the new director of the newspaper and I am going to unmask all of the true conflicts in the newspaper.''

Varela called the newspaper a "pigsty,'' said it made fun of the Cuban exile community in Miami and that it paid poorly.

"They've been making fun of people long enough and today they will see it end in violence. But someone has to pay and that person is going to be (Humberto) Castello.'' he said, referring to the Spanish-language paper's executive editor.

Ferreira said Varela had been in the newsroom a week ago and told former colleagues he had bought a sawed-off shotgun and an Uzi submachine gun because he felt unsafe in Jupiter, a Florida town he moved to after his recent divorce.

Acquired by McClatchy Co. last June in its more than $4 billion purchase of Knight Ridder Inc., both the Herald and El Nuevo Herald have seen their share of controversy and drama.

The Spanish language newspaper fired several reporters in September after the English language Herald reported that they also were being paid by the U.S. government-funded Radio and TV Marti to help undermine Cuban President Fidel Castro.

The revelation touched off a furious debate about journalistic ethics.

Bombarded by criticism from angry Cuban Americans who argued that opposing Castro was the duty of all Cuban exiles, and that there was therefore nothing unethical about receiving U.S. government money for anti-Castro broadcasts, publisher Jesus Diaz Jr. ordered the reporters to be reinstated and himself resigned in October.

Earlier this year El Nuevo Herald was also found to have doctored a photo of prostitutes in Havana to make it look like Cuban police were in cahoots with the prostitutes.

Last year, former Miami city commissioner Arthur Teele shot and killed himself in the lobby of the Herald building, days after pleading not guilty to corruption charges.