Associated Press

  HAVANA - Three Cuban sports officials said Friday they failed to receive American visas to attend a regional volleyball meeting that opened in Atlanta the same day.

  Angel Iglesias, vice president of the Cuban Institute of Sports, told reporters that U.S. visas never arrived for him, Omelio Castillo, president of the Cuban Volleyball Federation, and Jorge Enrique Luzon, member of the legal commission of the International Volleyball Federation.

  The congress representing the sport in North America, Central America and the Caribbean was being held Friday through Monday.

  "Cuba denounces this arbitrary act excluding it from the meeting," Iglesias told a late afternoon news conference.

  The U.S. Interests Section in Havana, which handles visa requests, was closed for the weekend late Friday. An after-hours request for comment from the U.S. State Department in Washington was not immediately returned.

  In past instances, however, the State Department has said visas were not issued to Cuban sports executives and athletes because the applications did not arrive on time.

  For the past two years, applicants from Cuba and other countries on the State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism require a more rigorous and time-consuming screening process than applicants from most other countries.