Jorge Mas Canosa, board chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation, and Carlos Alberto Montaner, president of the Cuban Liberal Union, resigned Thursday from the Madrid-based Spanish-Cuban Foundation amid mutual charges of intolerance and self-promotion.

Both stated their reasons in letters to Alberto Recarte, the foundation's chairman, ending a collaboration they started in November, when the foundation was created to promote democracy in Cuba.

``The main reason [for my resignation] is the impossibility and the futility of coming together in this institution with groups that systematically, and through the media, insult us personally and attempt to disqualify us from the political arena,'' Montaner wrote.

When he joined the foundation, Montaner said, he ``believed that an era of respect and collaboration had begun between the opponents of [Cuban President Fidel] Castro.

``I was wrong,'' he continued. ``Although it attempts to wear a civilized face in Spain, Mr. Mas Canosa's organization in Miami seems to know no other language than the gratuitous insult of a personal nature.''

In turn, Mas said he was resigning to keep the Spanish-Cuban Foundation ``from becoming a stage for political self-promotion by those who lack the background and the stature to reach pre-eminence and relevance.'' He named no names.

``We will not stoop to reply to allegations and fabrications that lack veracity,'' Mas added. ``The time has come to close our ranks against the dictatorship in Cuba, not to breach the ranks of the opposition.''

Montaner's mention of a ``gratuitous insult'' was an allusion to a letter to the editor of El Nuevo Herald by a Cuban American National Foundation leader Erelio Peña, published June 13.

In it, Peña wrote that Montaner ``on numerous occasions has expressed his desire to dialogue with Fidel Castro.''

In his resignation letter, Montaner also accused Mas of boasting that he controlled the Spanish-Cuban Foundation, during a conversation with two individuals.

According to one of the listeners, Juan Suarez Rivas of the Cuban Liberal Union, Mas stated that ``I don't participate in anything if I don't control it.'' Suarez has also resigned from the Madrid foundation.

Guillermo Cortazar, secretary general of the Spanish foundation, appeared relieved by the resignations.

``The departures of Montaner and Mas Canosa will bring a lowering of the foundation's high political profile,'' he said. ``We can thus begin a new stage of greater dedication to our humanitarian labor and concentration on the defense of human rights in Cuba.''

Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald