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Expelled Cuban

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HAVANA: Cuban diplomat Jose Imperatori, expelled from the United States for alleged spying, arrived in Havana from Canada on Thursday to a hero's welcome from President Fidel Castro who greeted him at the airport. Castro hugged the returning diplomat as he stepped off the plane's steps.

Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque was also at the airport to meet the flight, specially chartered by Cubana airline, as were Imperatori's parents. His wife and other family members travelled in the plane with him from Ottawa.

Speaking shortly before the plane's arrival, Castro told waiting reporters that Imperatori's return to Cuba was "satisfactory," after he had shown a "heroic" attitude.

Imperatori himself appeared relaxed, he said he was "happy to be back here in my home country," adding that he would "continue with the struggle."

Imperatori was expelled from the United States on Saturday on spying allegations. He was flown to Montreal and later went to the Cuban Embassy in Ottawa. Since midnight Monday, the Canadian government had considered.

Imperatori to have illegally overstayed a 48-hour transit visa. Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, speaking in Ottawa, told reporters: "He left about two o'clock this afternoon, voluntarily."

At Havana airport, Castro said Cuba's relations with Canada continued to be "normal."

Axworthy denied any special deal had been made with Havana to get Imperatori out of the country and insisted Canada had made no threats. But he emphasised: "We have taken no direct involvement in the dispute between the United States and Cuba."

But, after Imperatori left on Thursday, the Cuban embassy faxed journalists a long, rambling statement from him, outlining his version of the events that led to his expulsion from Washington.

Imperatori, in his fax, repeated his claims of innocence against the spying accusations, blaming his fate on "a conspiracy concocted in Miami by a terrorist mob of Cuban Americans" to discredit the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service.

US officials believe Imperatori was the contact at the Cuban Interests Section in Washington for Mariano Faget, a Cuban-born senior INS official arrested February 17 in Miami on charges of spying for Cuba.ÑAFP