MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Wives of jailed Cubans press Argentina to raise voice.

The wives of several jailed Cuban dissidents called here Monday for Argentina to press the Cuban communist regime on respect for human rights.

The women commented in the context of this week's official visit to the island of Argentine Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa.

"You never lose hope," Miriam Leiva, wife of Oscar Espinosa Chepe, told EFE. Chepe is an independent economist who was sentenced to 20 years in prison during last April's crackdown and summary trials that landed 75 dissidents behind bars.

Leiva, together with Gisela Delgado, Blanca Reyes and Julia Nuñez, and other dissidents' wives, signed a letter to Bielsa which they delivered Sunday afternoon to the Argentine Embassy in this capital.

Leiva said the letter was an exact copy of the one sent a few days ago to the Argentine Foreign Ministry in Buenos Aires requesting a meeting with the minister during his visit to Cuba. The women also requested Bielsa's intercession with the Havana government to release the jailed dissidents.

Bielsa, the first Argentine foreign minister to visit Cuba in 14 years, said upon his arrival in the island nation he hoped to improve deteriorating relations between the two countries.

The bilateral conflict erupted in early 2001, when Argentina withdrew its ambassador to Havana after Cuban President Fidel Castro called then-President Fernando De la Rua of Argentina a "lackey of the United States" for voting against Cuba at the U.N. Human Rights Commission.