Havana - Cuba has detained four more dissidents, according to human rights officials on Thursday.

The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National REconciliation reported that four men were seized early Thursday morning by security officials. Another opposition figure had disappeared from western Cuba, they said.

"We are trying to find out where he is," Elizardo Sanchez Santa Cruz said.

The men had already served long jail sentences and had been released last summer.

Over the past weeks, the Cuban government has increased pressure on opposition groups and warned that they were serving the United States when they pushed for changes in the political order.

Cuba's revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, who stepped down after nearly five decades at the helm and turned the country over to his brother earlier this year, has always charged that his critics were handmaidens of Washington and traitors.

On Wednesday, the foreign ministry reported that it had information about a series of provocative acts being planned and financed by the US Interest Section in Havana.

In the past days, several opposition figures were detained, then released.

Castro's brother, Raul, has undertaken a series of economic and consumer good reforms that have raised hopes for change on the Caribbean communist island less than 200 kilometres off the US coast. (dpa)