HAVANA -- (AP) -- The Cuban government has televised portions of the trial of
             four well-known dissidents, part of a continuing effort to prove that their hearings
             for inciting sedition were fair.

             The broadcast late Friday was apparently aimed at rallying public support and
             deflecting international criticism. The tape of fuzzy images showed the prosecutor
             delivering her final arguments.

             Standing behind a table piled with stacks of papers, the prosecutor lashed out at
             the dissidents for ``counterrevolutionary'' acts. Fidgeting on a front-row bench
             were the four defendants: three men in blue prison uniforms and a woman in a
             white blouse and dark skirt.

             Prosecutors recommended a six-year sentence for Vladimiro Roca, a former
             military pilot and son of late Cuban Communist Party leader Blas Roca, and five
             years each for lawyer Rene Gomez Manzano, engineer Felix Bonne and economist
             Marta Beatriz Roque.

             The verdicts are pending.

             On Thursday, the Communist Party newspaper Granma published a three-page
             editorial accusing critics of the trial of receiving financial and political support from
             the U.S. government and Miami-based exile groups.

             On Saturday, Granma published an attack on the U.S. State Department's newly
             released human rights report on countries including Cuba. ``Universal Judge of
             Human Rights?'' the headline asked.

             The article called the report ``one of the biggest jokes of so-called representative
             democracy in the United States.''

             Some Cubans who watched the broadcst of the trial said they didn't fully
             understand the case. Others said the dissidents should have been more cautious.

             ``Here, I don't talk about politics, not even in my own house,'' said a carpenter
             who gave his name only as Ernesto. ``Everyone knows what can happen.''

             The government accused the four dissidents of promoting aggressive U.S. policies
             toward the government of President Fidel Castro and trying to harm the economy
             by discouraging foreign investment.

             The defendants were arrested in July 1997 for criticizing a Communist Party
             document, saying it did not present solutions to Cuba's severe economic problems.
 

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