By Fiona Ortiz
GUATEMALA CITY, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Four Cuban men who drifted for a month in a fishing boat were rescued off the Guatemalan coast and have asked for political asylum, Guatemalan officials said on Tuesday.
"We have to evaluate the case to make a decision, but we still don't understand how exactly they were rescued,'' Guatemalan foreign relations minister Eduardo Stein told reporters at a news conference.
The four men were apparently rescued by a ship on Friday.
Guatemalan immigration officials said the four were fishermen from Niquero, Granma, Cuba who stole a boat on Jan. 21 and set out for Florida.
Hours after they left Cuba the boat ran out of fuel and they drifted for almost a month until they were rescued, a local newspaper reported.
"We would rather die than go back to Fidel,'' Siglo Veintiuno quoted the men as saying.
The men have applied for political asylum, but Stein said the story needed to be investigated because they were dropped off in the Atlantic port of Puerto Barrios by a foreign boat whose captain did not report to authorities that he was abandoning undocumented foreigners.
The case of the fishermen coincides with the first official visit to Guatemala by a high-level Cuban minister since the two countries renewed diplomatic relations in January.
Cuban Foreign Affairs Minister Roberto Robaina, who was in Guatemala on Tuesday for the first high-level, public exchange between the two countries in almost 40 years, called the incident a "manipulated coincidence.''
Stein said the Cubans have been given "safe-conduct'' papers while the asylum petition was analyzed.
He said if the Cubans did not meet conditions for political exile, they would be flown back to Cuba at the expense of the company that owned the boat that dropped them off. REUTERS
01:40 02-25-98