NEW YORK (Reuters) -- A dissident Cuban reporter has won a top U.S.
                  journalism award and vowed to keep battling for a free press on the
                  Communist-ruled island.

                  Raul Rivero, head of Havana's Cuba Press news agency, was singled out for
                  a special citation late Wednesday as part of the Columbia University
                  Graduate School of Journalism's 1999 Maria Moors Cabot Prizes for
                  reporting on Latin America.

                  Rivero, who has been repeatedly arrested since starting the small agency
                  four years ago, was denied a visa by Cuban authorities to pick up his
                  honour.

                  "This award gives me confidence to keep on working to deserve this
                  distinction and to continue striving for journalism that is clean, honest and
                  fair," he said in a videotaped address to a black-tie audience.

                  Rivero's daughter, Cristina, 25, who fled Cuba four years ago and now lives
                  in Miami, accepted the citation for her father.

                  Joel Simon, deputy director of the watchdog Committee to Protect
                  Journalists, said Rivero had feared being barred from returning to Cuba.

                  The refusal of a visa was a "further sign of their (Cuba's) extreme intolerance
                  of any expression that is not from the state media," Simon told Reuters.

                  A spokesman for the Cuban mission to the United Nations was not
                  immediately available for comment.

                  Maria Moors Cabot journalism prizes, among the most prestigious for
                  reporting on the region, were awarded to:

                  -- Jorge Zepeda Patterson, editor-in-chief and founder of the Publico daily
                  newspaper in Guadalajara, Mexico.

                  -- Linda Robinson, Latin American bureau chief of the U.S. News and
                  World Report magazine.

                  -- Juan Tamayo, Latin American correspondent for The Miami Herald
                  newspaper.

                  The journalism school also awarded a special citation to James McClatchy,
                  publisher of the McClatchy Newspapers (MNI.N) and a long-time
                  advocate of a free press in the hemisphere.