Cuba on Monday accused America's top diplomat in the country of ferrying funds to dissidents on the island from a man it characterizes as a terrorist.

E-mails and other correspondence suggest U.S. Interests Section chief Michael Parmly was asked to carry cash from Miami to dissidents in Havana, Cuban authorities said. In one e-mail, activist Martha Beatriz Roque urged her nephew in Miami to give "letters" to Parmly. Cuban officials claim the word "letters" was code for cash, but they gave no proof money was involved.

Cuba said the funds came from the Miami-based Fundacion Rescate Juridica, headed by Santiago Alvarez, a Cuban-American businessman once convicted in the U.S. of conspiring to collect military-style weapons to overthrow Cuba's government.

Alvarez is currently serving a 10-month prison term for refusing to testify against Luis Posada Carriles, the alleged mastermind of bombings of a Cuban jetliner and hotels, and of assassination attempts on former President Fidel Castro.

"This reveals the connection between the counterrevolutionaries in Cuba and the terrorists," Cuban Foreign Ministry official Josefina Vidal Ferreira said at a news conference carried live on state television and radio.

She asked U.S. authorities to carry out their own "deep investigations," and said Cuba is "waiting for the government of the United States to take appropriate measures and adhere to international protocol."

The U.S. and Cuba do not have diplomatic relations, maintaining interests sections, rather than embassies, in each other's capitals.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said he wasn't aware of the specific accusations against Parmly, but insisted "we are not violating international law."

"The U.S. government has programs to provide humanitarian assistance to people that are essentially forgotten by the Cuban government," McCormack said. "We do not stand in the way of private groups doing that as well."

Cuban officials showed messages they said were from a Yahoo e-mail account in Roque's name that mention monthly payments from Alvarez's organization of US$1,500 (euro965) to Roque and US$200 (euro125) to dissident Jose Luis Garcia Perez. Rescate Juridica also arranged US$2,400 (euro1,540) for the "Ladies in White," an opposition group whose members include dissident Laura Pollan, officials said.

Authorities promised to present more evidence supporting their accusations against U.S. diplomats on state television in coming days.

The allegations come two weeks after U.S. President George W. Bush joined Roque, Pollan and Garcia Perez in a video conference at the Interests Section.

Cuba has long accused American officials here of providing government support to the island's few dissidents, but Monday marked the first time it accused U.S. diplomats of passing private funds directly to opposition leaders. American authorities acknowledge delivering books, radios and other items, but adamantly deny giving cash.

Pollan and Roque could not be reached on Monday. Pollan was visiting her imprisoned activist husband, and a woman answering at Roque's home screamed "She's not here!" and slammed down the phone.

One of Alvarez's attorneys, Kendall Coffey, said the accusations appear "to be the latest falsity in a long-standing tirade by the Cuban government about Santiago Alvarez and other Cuban-American patriots."

"The focus of this attack seems to be to try to discredit nonviolent dissidents by claiming they receive funding through U.S. government channels, but the allegation is utterly false," he said.