Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque has confirmed the statement
made by his office last month that Sinn Fein had a representative based in
Havana.
When the statement was first made, Sinn Fein said it did not have, nor
ever had, a representative in Cuba or anywhere else in Latin America.
The statement comes as the Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams is preparing to
visit Cuba.
The statement from the Cuban authorities follows the arrest of three
suspected IRA members in Colombia last month.
Threats
They have now been moved from the main prison in the capital Bogota for
their own safety, prison officials said.
Lawyers for the three men say they have been moved to another jail run
by the local police, because of threats against their lives by right-wing
paramilitary suspects, also held in La Modelo prison.
The three Irishmen, Niall Terence Connolly, Martin McCauley and James
Monaghan, are accused of being senior IRA members and of training FARC
guerrillas in tactics and the use of explosives. They were arrested on
11 August.
The United States special envoy, who is due to have talks with Northern
Ireland politicians on Tuesday, said he would be raising the arrests
with Sinn Fein.
Richard Haass said: "Any co-operation with people in Colombia that are
challenging the rule of law, that are promoting the sale of drugs, any
co-operation with those people - to the United States - raises extremely
important and disturbing questions and that will be high on my agenda."
The trio were transferred to a cell in Colombia's judicial police
headquarters early on Sunday, a prison official said.
The move comes days after a right-wing paramilitary prisoner was killed
in La Picota federal prison, also located in Bogota.
Gun battles
The infamous La Modelo prison is one of Colombia's most dangerous jails.
In July it was the scene of a full-scale battle between guerrillas and
right-wing paramilitaries allied with drug traffickers.
Ten inmates died and 22 others were injured as the two sides battled it
out with grenades and automatic weapons.
"The three Irishmen were transferred as a precaution. Their cell in La
Modelo is next to a wing where there are right-wing paramilitary inmates,"
a prison spokesman said.
The trio had complained about the conditions in their bare windowless
cell.
One of their lawyers had been urging the authorities to move them, saying
an explosive had been tossed into their cell and that there was a
paramilitary plot to kill them.
Temporary move
Prison officials have denied that the men were attacked or that there is
a plot against them.
The prison spokesman said the three men would be held at the police
headquarters for "a month or two, until we complete some renovations at
La Modelo to improve security".
On Friday, Angel Gaitan Mahecha, a suspected leader of the outlawed
United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, was killed in a top security cell in La
Picota prison.
It is believed that the murder was the work of a rebel inmate.
