BY VIVIAN SEQUERA
 Associated Press

 HAVANA -- Led by a former Moscow correspondent for Cuba's official news agency, a small group of journalists who work outside state media formed the first association of its kind on Thursday.

 The Manuel Márquez Sterling Journalists Association brings together 40 of about 100 people in Cuba who describe themselves as ``independent journalists.''

 Association members told a news conference that the group's goals were to promote freedom of expression and information, and to help train ``alternative journalists.''

 Cuba's communist government regularly characterizes those journalists as counterrevolutionaries, and often accuses them of receiving money from Fidel Castro's political enemies in the Cuban exile community in Miami. They deny the charges.

 ``At the very least, they can be asked to write well in Spanish . . . they lack professionalism,'' the former correspondent for Prensa Latina news agency, Raul Rivero, told international reporters.

 The new association was named for the late Manuel Márquez Sterling, a Cuban journalist and diplomat.

 Columbia University in 1999 awarded Rivero a special Maria Moors Cabot Award, which is given for coverage of Latin America.

 He was cited for independent reportage despite government pressure.

 The association will offer classes in journalism and English, and will accept donations only from nongovernmental organizations, leaders said.

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