HAVANA -- (AP) -- A newly formed association of Cuban reporters working outside state media announced that government authorities had banned them from holding a public inauguration today of their new journalism courses.

 In a release sent by fax to foreign media here during the weekend, the Manuel Márquez Sterling Journalists Association said that to avoid confrontation it would not hold the inauguration. Márquez Sterling was a Cuban journalist and diplomat.

 But, ``we will not renounce study. There could be no law that prevents citizens from perfecting their knowledge of Spanish grammar, of the English language, and of
 journalism.''

 Led by a former Moscow correspondent for Cuba's official news agency, the association is made up of people who describe themselves as ``independent 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 Miami's Cuban exile community. They deny the charges.

 The group was formed with the help of Raúl Rivero, the former Prensa Latina news agency correspondent, and perhaps Cuba's best known journalist working outside state media.

 Many of the other reporters have had no formal journalism training. Their dispatches, often dictated by telephone to newspapers and websites in the Miami area, tend to read more like political opinion pieces then objective news stories.

 ``At the very least, they can be asked to write well in Spanish,'' Rivero told international reporters when the association was formed in late May.

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