U.S. says no formal charges from Cuba in diplomat tiff

HAVANA (Reuters) - The United States said on Saturday it has received no formal complaints from Cuba after its accusations this week that the top American diplomat in Havana broke international laws by ferrying money from an anti-Castro exile to a Cuban dissident.

A spokesman for the U.S. Interests Section in Havana said the Cubans had so far made all their charges in the media and had not contacted the United States.

"It's all been done through press and television," he said.

"If the government of Cuba has concerns about the conduct of U.S. diplomats, it should communicate them through official diplomatic channels rather than calling press conferences," said a statement from the U.S. Interests Section.

"It is not our practice to respond to allegations or claims made through the press."

The United States has an interests section but not an embassy in Cuba because the two countries, foes since Fidel Castro took power in the 1959 Cuban revolution, do not have formal diplomatic relations.

In press conferences and on television, Cuba has revealed e-mails and videotapes it said shows Interests Section chief Michael Parmly served as a go-between for a payment from Miami businessman Santiago Alvarez to dissident Martha Beatriz Roque.

The spokesman said he could neither confirm nor deny the charges.

He said it was not unusual for U.S. diplomats, who openly work with opponents to the Cuban government, to carry mail from relatives in Miami to Roque without knowing its contents.

Alvarez is currently in U.S. prison on weapons charges. He is a colleague of Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile now living in Miami who has been accused of masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban Airlines flight that killed 73 people.

The spokesman said U.S. diplomats were mystified by the Cuban campaign this week but said it may have been a verbal shot across the bow to discourage more direct U.S. financial aid to dissidents.

(Reporting by Jeff Franks; editing by Jackie Frank)