Cuba dissidents present plan for transition to democracy, market economy

                  HAVANA (Reuters) -- In a rare public move, an umbrella opposition
                  movement in Cuba on Wednesday unveiled its blueprint for a peaceful
                  transition to Western-style democracy from President Fidel Castro's current
                  one-party socialist system.

                  The Moderate Opposition's Round-Table for Reflection urged
                  immediate dialogue between the government, internal opposition, and
                  the foreign-exile community to plan political and economic opening in
                  communist-run Cuba.

                  "Today it is urgently necessary to have a transition towards democracy, but
                  a transition that is agreed upon and achieved through dialogue and
                  negotiation," one of the group's leaders, Fernando Sanchez Lopez, told a
                  news conference.

                  Sanchez heads the Democratic Solidarity Party, one of five small, illegal
                  opposition groups that formed the Round-Table.

                  At the news conference -- in itself a bold act for Cuban dissidents -- the
                  group presented a 56-page Common Platform outlining their vision for
                  change on the Caribbean island that Castro has ruled since his 1959
                  revolution.

                  Unlike more radical dissidents seeking a total break with the Castro
                  government, or promoting nonviolent civil disobedience, the Round-Table's
                  document used moderate terms to urge talks between all sectors of Cuban
                  society.

                  Many of its basic demands, however, were similar to other dissident groups
                  -- release of political prisoners, political plurality with multi-party elections,
                  economic liberalization, independence for the media and civic organizations,
                  and an end to politically motivated discrimination at work.

                  "The need for the transition is urgent in the national reality, given the
                  wearing-out of the current project (Castro's government) with its economic,
                  political, social and moral crisis, and its total lack of future perspective," the
                  document said in a chapter on "Aims of the Transition."

                  The other four groups in the Round-Table -- all claiming nationwide support
                  -- were the Cuban Democratic Project, the Cuban Workers' Unitary
                  Council, the Socialist Democratic Cuban Current, and the Cuban Liberal
                  Democratic Party.

                  Castro, 73, has specifically rejected the notion of a "transition to capitalism"
                  in Cuba, saying the island's "revolutionaries" were set to uphold their socialist
                  system into the future and beyond his death.

                  Castro's system outlaws opposition political parties in Cuba, and deems
                  overt, anti-government activity a "counter- revolutionary" crime punishable
                  under the penal code.

                  Despite that, scores of tiny, illegal dissident groups do exist in Cuba. But
                  they are often divided among themselves, have no access to state media,
                  cannot legally hold public meetings and do not threaten the ruling Communist
                  Party's dominance.

                  Havana rejects the word "dissident," saying supposed opposition activists
                  have no popular support, and are generally traitors and mercenaries in the
                  service of the U.S. government or of anti-Castro, Cuban exile groups in
                  Florida. The Cuban government says its political structure is more genuinely
                  democratic than in the West, and denies it represses freedom of expression
                  or holds prisoners of conscience.

                  Leaders of the Round-Table group said on Wednesday their ideas were
                  drawn up in consultation with a similar organisation of moderate Cuban exile
                  groups in the United States.

                  Their news conference at a Havana house was attended by foreign
                  correspondents and local, self-styled "independent" journalists working
                  unauthorized, outside state media.

                  Liberal Democratic Party president Osvaldo Alfonso Valdes said the fact
                  they had been able to stage a news conference at all showed Cuba was now
                  in a "post-totalitarian" stage where "the government does not like us, but we
                  are here."

                  The group delivered a copy of their Common Platform to Cuba's ruling
                  Council of State, headed by Castro, last week.