Human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez acknowledges getting a medal from the secret police.

BY NANCY SAN MARTIN

Cuban human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez admitted Monday that he received a medal from the secret police but insisted that the ceremony caught on tape and made public last week was part of a government campaign to smear opposition leaders and silence reform-minded thinkers within its ranks.

''I fell in a trap and for that I assume full responsibility,'' Sánchez told The Herald in a telephone interview from his Havana home.

Sánchez said he attended the videotaped ceremony in 1998 hoping that the agents of the state security department that he was meeting with -- whom he assumed were backed by reformers within the government -- would fulfill their earlier promise to release several political prisoners.

But after the videotape was released ''the reformist sector within the government has been relegated and silenced by the hard-liners within the regime,'' he added.

One of the communist-ruled island's most respected opposition activists, Sánchez was the focus of a government-sponsored book published last month claiming that he had been a snitch. He has repeatedly denied collaborating with the government, at times saying that he had received only a pen from the state security agents and now telling The Herald that he may have drunk too much during the medal ceremony. He said he recalled the medal ceremony only after watching the video on Cuban television.

Sánchez said he had held dozens of meetings over the years with the security agents in an effort to resolve the fate of Cuba's political prisoners, and was not surprised when he was awarded the medal.

''They put medals on everybody,'' said Sánchez, 59, adding that he returned his medal the same day he received it. ``For me, it had no significance. I've been part of the resistance for more than 30 years and will continue with my work.''

Calling the videotape and book part of a ''dirty war,'' Sánchez asserted that the government's allegations that the medal he received was intended as thanks for his betrayal of other dissidents and the identification of three CIA officials in a visiting American delegation, was a ''colossal lie.'' ''I've never compromised anyone,'' he said. ``On every one of those occasions, only I went to hell to meet with Satan.''

A few drinks

Sánchez said that against his better judgement he accepted a few drinks during the ceremony, which the government said took place Oct. 28, 1998. But he acknowledged that the meeting was fruitless because no prisoners were released.

A former university teacher of Marxism, Sánchez broke with the government in the late 1960s and became active in human rights. In 1987, he founded the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, which he still heads.

Sánchez said his first round of conversations with government agents began in 1987, when two state security officials visited him with a proposal for a discreet dialogue.

``They wanted me to talk to them about problems before going to the [foreign] media.''

Sánchez said he accepted but insisted that he was always transparent in his efforts to help political prisoners, and pointed to his 1988 public announcement that his commission had ``regular work sessions with high-ranking officials of state security.''

At the time, Sánchez was quoted as saying that the ``relationships were necessary for the solution to the current problems.''

On Aug. 6, 1989, Sánchez was arrested on charges of ''spreading false information against international peace.'' He was sentenced to two years in prison and was released in 1991.

He said he did not hear again from the government until 1997, when the same agent who pinned the medal on him -- identified by the government as Interior Ministry Col. Arístides Gómez -- came to his home to offer a new olive branch: ``He said they wanted to talk to avoid public scandals and protests.''

Again, Sánchez said, he accepted.

''In 97, like in 87, the central theme of our discussion had to do with the situation of political prisoners. I was working toward trying to get their liberation,'' he said.

Door open

Sánchez said he had no regrets about his meetings with the government and will leave the door open to dialogue, ``because we have no weapons other than reason, truth and word of honor.''

His only concern now is ''the distraction this has generated, that the public might lose sight of the grave problems that exist in Cuba,'' he said, ``that they might dance to the tune the government is playing.''