Bahamian officials said Friday that outside of Japan's offer to grant a visa to one Cuban baseball player, they have not heard from any country willing to accept the 146 Cuban refugees detained in the Bahamas and facing repatriation.

They said none of the detainees will be sent back to Cuba in the next few days, however.

``Apart from Japan, we have not heard from any country,'' said George Stewart, director general of the Bahamas Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Japan has said it would grant a visa to Jorge Luis Toca, a former first baseman on the Cuban national team who is married to a Japanese citizen.

Rene Guim, a spokesman for sports agent Joe Cubas, said in Miami Friday that Toca remains in detention after rejecting the Japanese visa ``in a show of solidarity for the rest of the people who risked their lives along with him.''

``He feels it is inappropriate for him to leave his companions behind in the detention center and risk that they be repatriated back to Cuba where they will receive very harsh punishment,'' Guim said.

Stewart said he had received a letter from Cubas Friday morning saying that Cubas had received ``verbal commitments'' from several governments who ``are willing to provide humanitarian visas for these Cuban nationals.''

Cubas asked the Bahamas government to delay sending any of the detainees back to Cuba while he completes the ``extensive documentation to process such a large group.'' He did not identify the countries.

Stewart said there ``are no plans to deport any Cubans within the next few days.''

Five of the 151 Cubans who had been held at the Carmichael Road Detention Center outside Nassau were released after the United Nations High Commission for Refugees ruled that they qualified for political asylum.

UNHCR representatives said the other 146 detainees -- including four baseball players and a coach -- did not meet the criteria for political asylum. They were joined by 16 more Cubans -- 11 men and five women -- flown in Friday from Bimini, where they had been taken after being rescued at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard earlier in the week.

Meanwhile, the Bahamas quietly sent 207 Haitian refugees to Port-au-Prince on Thursday aboard two Bahamasair charter flights, according to Carlton Wright, deputy permanent secretary in the Bahamas Ministry of Labor, Immigration and Training.

Sixteen other Haitians were detained Thursday, Wright said, including the crew of a Haitian boat accused of attempting to smuggle in several Haitians.

The last repatriation flight to Cuba from the Bahamas was Dec. 23, when 35 were returned to Havana under an agreement with Cuba signed in January 1996. It was the fourth such flight last year, none of which attracted much attention.

``They make a big deal about baseball players, but to us they are all the same,'' said one exasperated Bahamian official.

In the Cayman Islands, meanwhile, authorities were preparing to repatriate 30 Cuban rafters who reached Cayman Brac on Tuesday.

``The Cayman Islands government has formally requested the approval of the Cuban government for the repatriation of this group,'' said a government statement released Friday.

A government source told The Herald that, ``with the exception of any who can prove they are victims of political persecution,'' all of the Cubans will be returned under a 1995 agreement with Cuba.

Herald staff writers Elaine DeValle and Pablo Alfonso contributed to this report.