MIAMI, Sept 22 (Reuter) - Brothers to the Rescue said on Monday it may have faced a second confrontation with Cuban warplanes this weekend, 19 months after Cuban MiGs shot down two planes flown by members of the Miami-based exile group.
A U.S. military official confirmed that at least one Cuban MiG warplane was sent up on Saturday to check on two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft which were in international airspace.
Jose Basulto, founder of Brothers to the Rescue, said the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration called the group's hangar on Saturday while two of its planes were flying over the Straits of Florida 17 miles (27 km) northwest of Havana.
Brothers to the Rescue aircraft regularly fly over the waters that separate Cuba and Florida looking for small boats carrying Cubans to the United States. The group was founded to assist such refugees, known as rafters.
``We received a call from the FAA at our hangar letting us know that there was radar scanning the area and they had seen the MiGs take off,'' Basulto told Reuters. ``We contacted immediately our pilots there and they turned north to avoid any kind of contact.''
``Yes, the brothers did have a couple of planes in international airspace on Saturday and the Cubans sent up a MiG to check them out. But I don't have anything more than that on it,'' said a U.S. military official, who asked not to be identified.
The official, who spoke to Reuters at the Pentagon, said the U.S. military regularly monitors the air space off Cuba using radar and other means.
Basulto said the pilots did not see any MiGs. But he said the U.S. State Department called him later on Saturday and confirmed the event. ``The U.S. State Department called me and confirmed to me that they had seen the MiGS and that we had been in international airspace,'' he said.
Four fliers from Brothers to the Rescue were killed on Feb. 24, 1996, when Cuban MiGs shot down their two Cessnas. The incident raised tensions between Washington and Havana.
Among other things, it forced President Bill Clinton to sign the Helms-Burton Act tightening the U.S. embargo on Cuba, which in turn dragged Washington into a trade dispute with Europe, Canada and Mexico.
A State Department official on Monday said only that a Brothers to the Rescue plane moved about two miles (3.2 km) north of Cuban airspace on Saturday, which corresponded to the flight plan that had been filed.
He also said there had so far been no contact between the State Department and Cuban authorities about the matter.
An FAA spokeswoman said that agency had not comment.
In Havana, there was no official comment on the incident.
Since the downing of the Brothers to the Rescue planes in 1996, Cuba has said it will use ``the necessary means'' to prevent violations of its airspace or territorial waters.
Havana has reiterated this on several occasions in the last 18 months when Miami-based exiles have sent protest flotillas of boats and planes to spots near Cuba, but not inside the island's territorial waters or airspace.
At the time of the plane downings, Cuba justified its action saying the planes were violating its airspace and Havana had tolerated numerous such violations in previous years.
The United States said the Brothers to the Rescue planes were outside Cuban airspace and should not have been shot down wherever they were.
17:21 09-22-97