CUBAN SPORTS OFFICIALS: SOTOMAYOR DRUG CHARGE A FRAMEUP

HAVANA (AP) -- Cuban sports officials, claiming that their athletes face
continuing prejudice, will contest a ruling that cost high jumper Javier
Sotomayor a gold medal at the Pan American Games because of a positive drug
test.

"Our athletes have had to compete under an atmosphere of hostility,
exaggerated provocation and unlimited intolerance," sports minister Humberto
Rodriguez said Thursday.

Rodriguez said Cuba will fight Sotomayor's two-year suspension from
international competition that will force him out of this month's world
championships and next year's Olympics.

He couldn't say on what grounds the Cubans might appeal or offer any
explanation for the presence of cocaine in two urine samples taken from the
world record-holder and four-time Pan Ams gold medalist.

"That is something I do not have to explain," he said while offering a
lecture on the value of sport to Cuba and the honor and unimpeachable
integrity of Cuban athletes.

"We have been subject to such pressure in training centers ... phone calls,
personal messages in direct and indirect provocations."

Cuban officials have charged that Sotomayor was framed, and that the cocaine
must have been slipped into his food or drink before the competition as part
of a plot by Cuba's enemies.

Jose Ramon Fernandez, a vice president of the Cuban Council of Ministers,
made veiled references to the United States during a telephone interview.

"They denied before the plots to assassinate, to sabotage," Fernandez said.
"What is the hairy, ugly, powerful hand behind this? We do not know yet. ...
With technology and power, certain agencies can do anything, even things we
can't think of."

Sotomayor, meanwhile, angrily disputed the positive cocaine test that cost
him his gold medal and said he was the unwitting victim of a "dirty trick."

"I am innocent," the world record-holder told reporters as he left his home
Thursday in the fashionable Miramar neighborhood.

In an interview published and broadcast by Cuba's state media, Sotomayor
said he doesn't even take vitamins. He pointed out that countless previous
drug tests at competitions and by Cuba's official sports doctors had all
showed negative results.

"I have only seen that substance in the movies," Sotomayor said about
cocaine in an interview with the Communist Party daily Granma. "I am the
victim of a maneuver, a dirty trick."

The Sotomayor case is the biggest drug scandal in track and field since
Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was suspended and stripped of his gold medal
after testing positive for an anabolic steroid at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

So far, Sotomayor has talked only to Cuba's government-controlled media,
which has supported him.

But to Pan Am medical officials, all that matters is that the drug was in
Sotomayor's urine. They said they don't question how it got there.

Sotomayor, the world indoor and outdoor record-holder and the only high
jumper to clear 8 feet, won his fourth Pan Am gold in the high jump on
Friday. Following the drug test results, he was stripped of the medal and
suspended for two years. That makes him ineligible for this month's World
Track and Field Championships and next year's Olympics in Sydney.

Sotomayor was the third athlete -- all gold medalists -- to test positive at
the games. Canada's in-line roller hockey team lost its gold medal after
goalie Steve Vezina's positive test. The Dominican Republic's Juana Rosario
Arrendel, the women's high-jump winner, lost her prize as well.

Sotomayor's urine sample showed a reading consistent with a person who uses
cocaine, Pan Am medical chief Eduardo de Rose said.

Recreational drug use remains rare in Cuba, and is frowned upon by Fidel
Castro's government, which considers it a negative byproduct of capitalism.
But drug use has grown in recent years with an increase of tourism to the
island nation.