Saying it wants to improve U.S.-Cuban cooperation on drug interdiction, the U.S. government is sending four Coast Guard and State Department officials to Havana to meet their Cuban counterparts next week.

U.S. officials took pains to play down the visit, portraying it as a low-level session on issues such as the radio frequencies used by Cuban and U.S. patrols in an area with an increasingly worrisome ``interdiction gap.

But Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., called it another Clinton administration attempt at ``appeasement and collaboration'' with a Cuban regime that he said is deeply involved in drug trafficking.

Michael Ranneberger, head of the State Department's Cuba Desk, denied that the meeting signaled any change in policy toward Cuba and characterized it as an attempt to improve the existing system of U.S.-Cuban cooperation in the war on drugs.

``We are pursuing working-level, operational cooperation in an effort to plug interdiction gaps on a case-by-case basis, he said. ``This does not reflect any change in our Cuba policy. We have been engaged in this for a number of years and the current [visit] fits within those parameters.

Cuba and the Coast Guard station in Miami long ago established a telex line, later upgraded to a fax line, to alert each other to potential drug-trafficking plane and ship movements.

President Clinton's drug czar, former Gen. Barry McCaffrey, said last month that Cuba had shown a willingness to step up cooperation with U.S. officials on interdiction but had been largely ineffective.

Cuba's ability to patrol its own waters and airspace has been drastically reduced since the collapse of Soviet subsidies hit its military and border patrol.

U.S. officials have recently reported an increase in the use of Cuban airspace and waters by narcotics traffickers. Large airplanes or boats drop off drug loads in areas where Havana forces cannot reach them, for pickup by fast boats that deliver the loads to Florida.

Even so, the government makes drug seizures from time to time. On Friday Cuba announced that it had seized half a ton of cocaine and arrested three Bahamians in a boat off the northern coast of Camaguey province, the sixth drug seizure in the region since the beginning of the year.

A senior U.S. official who participated in the decision to send the U.S. team to Havana said the four Americans will meet Monday with similarly low-level Cuban counterparts from the Foreign Ministry and border patrol.

Among the items on the U.S. agenda are requests to upgrade the fax line between Miami and Havana to a voice line, and to coordinate the radio frequencies used by U.S. and Cuban ships and planes in drug cases, the official said.

Not on the agenda is any possibility of sharing intelligence reports on drug trafficking, carrying out joint operations or providing U.S. assistance to Cuba's drug enforcers, the official said.

Maria Travierso of El Nuevo Herald contributed to this report.