The Cuban government's offers to return to South Florida the 26 U.S. residents jailed in Havana on charges of people smuggling are unlikely to be accepted because they are designed only to embarrass Washington, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

State Department spokesman James Foley confirmed the Cuban proposals after Havana detained two U.S. residents accused of trying to smuggle Cubans into the United States during the weekend. One would-be refugee drowned in the incident.

A report in Trabajadores newspaper said Cuban coast guardsmen arrested Joel Dorta Garcia and David Garcia Capote, adding two more U.S. residents to the two dozen already held in Cuban jails on charges of people smuggling.

In the same incident, the Cuban coast guard rescued 13 would-be refugees after their U.S.-registered boat sank seven miles off the Cuban coast.

``They have offered to return . . . 26 alleged alien smugglers to the U.S. We have this under review. We're looking at the information they provided as well as our own laws, Foley told reporters.

U.S. officials said two of the 26 suspected smugglers jailed in Cuba are U.S. citizens and 24 are Cuban-born U.S. residents. Havana has not allowed U.S. consular officials access to the noncitizens.

Dorta Garcia and Garcia Capote are listed as licensed Florida drivers with residences in Key West and Miami, respectively.

``We have not formally reponded to the government of Cuba except to restate our commitment to combat alien smuggling. So we're currently reviewing that offer, Foley said.

But one U.S. official aware of the Cuban offers, which have been made repeatedly since last summer, indicated they would probably not be accepted. ``They know this would put us in a difficult situation because it would be very hard to get convictions in Miami, the official said.

A U.S. government immigration expert added, ``We would have to be absolutely crazy to accept the return of several smuggling cases knowing that we could never convict those people in Miami -- and that the Cuban government could then complain and smirk about it for years.

Miami juries and even some judges have tended to view with sympathy any defendants accused of acts seen as undermining President Fidel Castro.

Two Cuban exiles recently convicted in Miami in a smuggling case in which 14 of 30 passengers died were sentenced to 16 months in prison, $100 fines and supervised release terms of three to five years.

People smuggling has soared since U.S. efforts to tighten interdiction patrols by the Coast Guard and Border Patrol created a profitable business for boat owners who charge $5,000 to $10,000 a head for the trip, according to U.S. law enforcement officials in Cuba.

Cuba has released the names of only a few of the suspects, and no addresses or boat registration numbers.

President Fidel Castro's government has repeatedly complained that Washington in effect promotes illegal migration from Cuba by welcoming any refugee who reaches land and failing to severely punish people smugglers.

But the propaganda side of Cuba's offers to send the 26 suspected smugglers back to the United States was evident when Castro addressed the issue at length during a January speech.

``We believe they [U.S. courts] should try them because we need the space in our prisons for drug traffickers and other crimes, Castro said sarcastically. Cuba has one of the largest prison systems in the hemisphere.

Saying that people smugglers would even face the death penalty in U.S. courts -- a vast exaggeration -- Castro also poked fun at those who express sympathy and concern for political prisoners in Cuba.

``These guys [smugglers] would have more fear there [in the U.S.], because if they are jailed here they could always be portrayed to the world as political dissidents, as political prisoners, he said.