(MENAFN- Qatar News Agency) ami Florida April 10 - The Government of Cuba is willing to swap a US government subcontractor jailed in Havana for four years with three Cuban spies in US prisons a senior official said Thursday. Subcontractor Alan Gross is serving a 15-year sentence for illegally giving Cuban Jews US Agency for International Development-financed communications equipment to allow them to bypass government controls on access to the Internet. Last week Gross stopped eating food to protest his treatment by the governments of Cuba and the United States according to Miami Herald newspaper. Cuba's Foreign Ministry official in charge of relations with the US Josefina Vidal said in a statement that her government was "concerned" with the announcement Tuesday that Gross had stopped eating last week. Vidal also reiterated Havana's willingness to "resolve" the Gross case if Washington meets Cuba's "humanitarian concerns" for the three spies (from a group of five) held in US prisons since 1998. Two have completed their sentenced and returned to Cuba. "Gross is in good physical condition and his health is normal and stable" she said adding that he is imprisoned in a hospital "not because his health requires it but because in that place he can be guaranteed specialized attention by medical personnel." Gross went on hunger strike after learning that USAID had risked making his situation in Cuba worse by launching a semi-clandestine Twitter-like system just months after his arrest his US lawyer Scott Gilbert said Tuesday
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