Angry over criticism from Havana, Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso said she will consider a pardon for four jailed anti-Castro Cuban exiles.

BY NANCY SAN MARTIN

Angered by Cuban attacks, Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso Tuesday was considering pardoning four anti-Castro Cuban exiles jailed in Panama -- and ordered the ''immediate'' departure of Havana's ambassador to Panama.

In Miami, leaders of a group of exiles who have supported the four by raising $400,000 for their defense said they were ''elated'' with Moscoso's announcement but denied reports that they had lobbied the Panamanian president for pardons.

The twin actions by Moscoso, whose term expires next Monday, plunged Panama-Cuba relations to a historic low and may leave the incoming government of President-elect Martin Torrijos with a diplomatic mess on its hands.

The flare-up began when Havana accused Panama of considering pardons for the four men to curry favor with Cubans in Miami, where the men have become a cause celebre in some exile circles. The Panamanian president was offended by the accusation.

QUICK CHANGE

''The president had not considered a pardon . . . but now she is,'' Foreign Minister Harmodio Arias told The Herald in a telephone interview from Panama, indicating her shift was an angry reaction to the Cuban complaints.

Arias added: ``We are in a very cold period on relations with Cuba. It will be up to the new government to reconstruct a relationship that had been very good until Cuba wrecked it by attacking our president.''

Arias met Cuban Ambassador Carlos Zamora Tuesday morning and handed him a note ordering him to leave. Panama recalled its ambassador from Havana on Monday.

The four men jailed include three Miami exiles and Luis Posada Carriles, an El Salvador resident labeled by Havana as its most wanted terrorist. They were arrested in 2000 in Panama City after President Fidel Castro, visiting for a heads-of-state summit, alleged at a news conference that the exiles were plotting to kill him.

They were cleared of the murder charges and possession of 33 pounds of explosives but were convicted in April of endangering the public safety and given sentences of up to eight years in prison. Posada and the three Miamians -- Pedro Remón, Guillermo Novo and Gaspar Jiménez -- claimed they were in Panama to help a Cuban general who was to accompany Castro and supposedly had planned to defect.

Arias said Cuba had made ''offensive'' allegations that Moscoso was in cahoots with Miami exiles to free the four men. On Sunday, Cuba issued a strongly worded statement threatening to break relations if the four convicts were pardoned.

NO LOBBYING

In Miami, Santiago Alvarez, a developer and friend of several of the convicted men, said he was ''elated'' with Moscoso's decision to consider a pardon but denied any knowledge of Miami exile efforts to lobby her before this week.

''If there has been pressure on the part of the Cuban community, it has not been from me or from any of the families'' of the jailed men, he said.

Cuban exiles did write letters to Moscoso urging clemency for the four and met with Panama's vice consul in Miami last year -- before the four were convicted -- to appeal on their behalf, Alvarez said.

Alvarez, who spearheaded the campaign to raise funds for the men's defense along with fellow Miami exile Ignacio Castro, said about $400,000 had been raised.

`JUDICIAL MEANS'

''Innumerable steps have been taken at the judicial level to win their release, but I don't know of any steps taken before the president of Panama,'' Ignacio Castro said. ``These were done through regular means, judicial means, that everyone everywhere has a right to use.''

The Cuban government asked Panama to detain and extradite Castro -- on an unrelated charge of plotting against Havana -- if he showed up in Panama for the trial. He didn't show up.

The four convicts have long been involved in anti-Castro violence.

Posada, now about 76 years old, has at times admitted, at times denied that he masterminded a string of terror bombings of Havana tourist spots in 1997. In a trial in Venezuela, he was found not guilty of involvement in the 1976 midair bombing of a Cuban jetliner that killed 73 people, but escaped from prison before his retrial.

EMILIO MILIAN CASE

Jiménez served time in Mexico for an attempted kidnapping and murder of Cuban diplomats there. He was also indicted in the 1976 bombing that wounded the late Miami newsman Emilio Milián, but those charges were dismissed.

Remón was convicted in the attempted murder of Cuba's delegate to the United Nations nearly 20 years ago. Novo's conviction in the 1976 Washington murder of a leftist Chilean diplomat was overturned on appeal.