BY TIM JOHNSON

  WASHINGTON - Belize may be tiny, but it knows how to say ''no'' to Washington.

  Belize has rejected a U.S. proposal to convert a Voice of America relay station to beam U.S.-operated Radio Martí signals toward Cuba.

  The denial has dismayed Cuban-American supporters of the station, who say the Belize facility might have helped Radio Martí sidestep efforts by Cuba to
  jam its signal.

  But Belize, a former British colony in Central America, sought to avoid getting ensnared in U.S.-Cuba frictions. It did not want to risk that Havana would
  retaliate by withdrawing more than 100 doctors and nurses it has sent to Belize.

  ''We do not want to get involved,'' said Vaughan Gill, a spokesperson for the Belize government. ``Belize has good relations with both Cuba and the
  United States.''

  The United States operates two AM radio transmitters near the town of Punta Gorda in the southernmost part of Belize. The transmitters send both
  English and Spanish Voice of America broadcasts throughout Central America each evening.

  As a sister facility to the Voice of America, Radio Martí was established in 1985 to offer an independent source of news and entertainment to Cubans.
  Radio Martí is beamed toward Cuba on AM from Marathon in the Keys, and on short wave from Greenville, N.C., and Delano, Calif.

  In late 2000, U.S. officials began scouring the Caribbean looking for alternative broadcast sites to send the signals of Radio Martí toward Cuba from a
  different latitude, making it more difficult for Cuba to block its signals.

  Then they noticed the Belize facility and quickly allotted $750,000 in the 2002 fiscal year budget to enhance the site. An appeal went out to Prime Minister
  Said Musa of Belize for permission to change the use of the facility.

  No one expected Belize -- an unspoiled nation popular with scuba divers and Maya archaeology buffs -- to refuse. But two months ago, it did just that,
  setting tongues wagging around Capitol Hill about how the Bush administration took it on the chin from Belize.

  Since 1999, Belize has hosted an increasing number of Cuban physicians and nurses working in remote villages.

  Gill, the government spokesman, also noted that more than 100 Belizean students are in Cuba on full scholarships, some of them studying medicine.

  As word arrived in Washington this spring that Belize might turn down the U.S. request, the State Department sent two diplomatic notes to Belmopan,
  Belize's capital.

  But Belize held firm, and last week Brian Conniff, the acting director of the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors, acknowledged that Washington is
  looking for other options.