Reporters were shown through two Cuban prisons in an effort to disarm criticism that is expected in the annual United Nations session on human rights.

BY ANITA SNOW
Associated Press

HAVANA - Cuba has opened parts of two penitentiaries to international journalists, hoping to rebut criticism about prison conditions in the weeks before the U.N. human rights body votes on the island's record.

The Wednesday visit to the hospital wards of Havana's Combinado del Este for men and the Manto Negro Western Women's Prison was the first such media visit to Cuban prisons in more than 15 years, authorities said.

Human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez, who has spent 8 ½ years in Cuban prisons, characterized the tour as ``primitive propaganda.''

[The International Committee of the Red Cross stopped its visits to Cuban prisons in 1989 because the government would not give it complete access to the facilities or allow its inspectors to speak privately with prisoners.]

The unusual tour Wednesday came two weeks before the United Nations Human Rights Commission is to consider a resolution expressing ''regret'' for a crackdown on the opposition that put 75 activists behind bars last year.

''The conditions here are very acceptable,'' prisoner Julio Zamora, 48, told reporters at the Combinado del Este's National Prisoners Hospital on Havana's eastern outskirts.

''The food has a lot of calories and is varied,'' added Zamora, among inmates authorized by authorities to speak to journalists. Zamora, serving a 20-year sentence for robbery, was not a patient at the hospital.

''I don't think what they are doing in the United Nations is right,'' said inmate Enrique Prieto, 31, who joined the hospital's two-year nursing program while serving 30 years for armed robbery. ``The people are attended with a lot of care.''

Nurses and military doctors led reporters and photographers through operating rooms, an intensive care ward, and recovery rooms linked by hallways reeking of disinfectant and fresh paint. Journalists were invited to join the tour, originally organized for a conference on prison medicine.

''We can affirm that inmates and detainees in Cuba receive adequate and humane treatment,'' Col. Pablo Hernandez Cruz of the Interior Ministry told the Cuban Congress on Prison Medicine earlier this week.

Later, reporters toured the medical wards -- including cells for new mothers and their babies -- at the Western Women's Prison.

The prison maternity wing last year cared for 48 pregnant women and 37 newborns, said medical director Dr. Orestes González. He said mothers receive more specialized food and calories than other inmates, and their babies get regular checkups, including once a week during their first month.

Senior U.S. officials in Havana, speaking on condition of anonymity, told journalists this week that a debate over Cuba's prison conditions was diverting attention from a larger issue -- the sentences of six to 28 years in prison given to the 75 activists a year ago.

Cuba charged the activists with being mercenaries working with U.S. diplomats to undermine President Fidel Castro's socialist system. The dissidents and Washington have denied that.