As Radio Marti announced Monday it will double the power of its broadcasts to Cuba, U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart endorsed three humanitarian aid programs that will be promoted on the station -- including an essay contest that will send 100 TV-VCRs to Cuban children.

In a press conference broadcast live to Cuba, the taxpayer-funded station said it will increase broadcasts to 100 kilowatts in order to break through the signal-jamming blockade used by the Castro regime.

Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, used the live broadcast to criticize President Clinton's ``people-to-people'' policy toward Cuba, saying that baseball games and lobbying visits did not touch the real people of Cuba.

Diaz-Balart said he hoped the three initiatives announced via Radio Marti would provide genuine contact between Cubans and Americans.

``These programs will help the victims of the atheist state, people suffering under medical apartheid, and the families of political prisoners,'' Diaz-Balart said.

The programs:

In the Rescuing the Three Kings essay contest, children will write about the meaning of the Three Kings. Gifts for Three Kings Day -- part of Hispanic Christmas celebrations -- will be sent to the young authors of the first 1,000 essays. Of those, 100 will get TV-VCRs.

In a program called Awakening Smiles, medical aid will be sent to children.

Under Project Help, families of Cuba's political prisoners will be ``adopted'' and receive financial support for a year from Cuban families in exile. AT&T has donated 600 calling cards so families can contact each other.

While some might question TVs and VCRs as humanitarian aid, the 1996 law defining the Cuban embargo describes them as aid to advance human rights and democracy. The televisions will go to Cuba via Spain.

Although Radio Marti's previous attempts to boost its signal have escalated ``electronic wars'' in which Cuba jammed U.S. commercial broadcasts as far away as Pennsylvania, both the FCC and members of Congress support the renewed efforts.

``We know that Castro will take some sort of reprisal against the station, but that would be against international law,'' said Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, also present at the news conference.

To explain complicated rules and regulations between the United States and Cuba, the State Department on Monday launched a Web site constructed in secret.

``We want to provide as much information as possible on crackdowns of dissidents, on information about the ways in which Castro has an embargo on his own people, so that people can't say they didn't know this or they didn't know that when they were meeting with the government in Cuba,'' State Department spokesman James P. Rubin told the Associated Press.

The Web site can be visited at www.state.gov/www/regions/wha/cuba/index.html

El Nuevo reporter Rui Ferreira and news agencies contributed to this report.