Washington, August 5 (RHC) -- The United States admitted on Monday that they sent a group of Latin American youth to Cuba on a program aimed at encouraging a regime change on the island, under the umbrella of civic and health initiatives.

The initiative "enabled support for Cuban civil society, while providing a secondary benefit of addressing the desires Cubans express for information and training about HIV prevention," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in Washington as cited by international media.

The program was exposed by an Associated Press report that stressed the covert nature of the operation launched by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which was aimed at encouraging a rebellion by Cuban young people against the revolutionary government.

With this aim in mind, the agents set up an HIV-AIDS prevention workshop, which served as a cover, but were plagued with lack of competence and risks. Nearly a dozen Latin Americans were used in the program which paid them as little as $5.41 dollars an hour.

Youth from Venezuela, Costa Rica and Peru were sent to Cuba with the aim of encouraging unrest. They did undercover work pretending to be tourists in an effort to identify people that could become political activists, according to the Associated Press.