Fidel Castro says US inaction means its "war on terror" is losing credibility
Cuban President Fidel Castro has led hundreds of thousands of people on a march in Havana to demand that the US arrest an anti-communist militant.Luis Posada Carriles, 77, is accused of plotting the bombing of a Cuban plane in 1976, which killed 73 people.
Mr Castro says Washington is guilty of hypocrisy for taking no action against Mr Posada Carriles while waging a "war on terrorism".
Mr Posada Carriles is believed to be in hiding in the US.
He was released from prison in Panama last year after outgoing President Mireya Moscoso pardoned him in connection with an alleged plot to kill President Castro in 2000.
He was reportedly smuggled into the US via the Texan border with Mexico earlier this year.
'Treason' denied
Recently declassified documents show Mr Posada Carriles, who was born in Cuba but is a Venezuelan citizen, used to work for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
He denies any involvement in the airliner bombing.
"They accuse me of being the intellectual author of fabricating a weapon of war and of treason to the homeland. No-one saw me make a bomb," he told the Miami Herald in an interview published on Tuesday.
Venezuela has applied to the US for Mr Posada Carriles to be extradited to stand trial for the attack on the flight from Caracas to Havana.
Luis Posada Carriles denies involvement in the airliner bombingHe escaped from a Venezuelan jail in the 1980s while facing charges for his alleged involvement in the airline explosion.
Seeming to walk a little stiffly in his green military fatigues, Mr Castro, 78, led protesters past the US offices in the Cuban capital on Tuesday.
"Down with terrorism! Down with Nazi doctrines and methods! Down with the lies!" he said.
Mr Castro says the US "war on terror" will lose credibility if Washington refuses to act against an alleged terrorist on its own soil.
Demonstrators, marching in groups of schoolchildren, doctors, soldiers and students, wearing Cuba's national colours of red, white and blue, chanted: "Bush, fascist, capture the terrorist."
In a massive overnight logistics operation, many had been taken into the city by bus before dawn, reports the BBC's Stephen Gibbs in Havana.
Our correspondent says Cuba has been at pains to stress that the demonstration was not against American people, but against the US government and specifically the safe haven it appears to be offering Mr Posada Carriles.
The US state department's official line is that it does not know where Mr Posada Carriles is, he adds.
BBC News 18.05.2004
Profile: Cuban 'plane bomber'
Posade Carriles: "I've always believed in the armed struggle"
Terror suspect Luis Posada Carriles poses a double headache for the United States: his alleged crimes relate to Cuba and its ally Venezuela, and he is a former CIA employee.
The 77-year-old was detained in Miami by immigration agents after apparently slipping into the US illegally.
But he is wanted abroad for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner, in which 73 died, and for 1997 bomb attacks on hotels in the Cuban capital Havana, which killed one.
"The Bush administration... is on the horns of a dilemma," Washington-based Cuba analyst Dan Erickson told AFP news agency.
"On the one hand, they don't want to hand Posada Carriles over to antagonist countries... but obviously it's not acceptable to just let him remain free in Miami."
Cuba and Venezuela are both pushing for his extradition. Cuban leader Fidel Castro led a million-strong march through Havana on the day of his arrest to a chant of "Capture the terrorist".
'Hero'
Some Cuban exiles hostile to the communist government in Havana regard Mr Posada Carriles as a hero, said Pepe Hernandez, president of the Cuban American National Foundation.
"He's been fighting one of the worst tyrannies this continent has experienced," Mr Hernandez told AP news agency.
Before his detention in Miami, Mr Posada Carriles, who was born in Cuba but has Venezuelan citizenship, insisted his "only objective" was to fight for Cuba's "freedom".
Reports suggest he was involved in operations against leftists across Latin America over the decades, from Guatemala to El Salvador.
According to declassified US government documents, he once worked for the CIA. The papers also reveal that an FBI informer "all but admitted" that Mr Posada was one of those behind the plane bombing.
In an interview for the Miami Herald newspaper, Mr Posada Carriles denied any involvement in the plane attack but declined to confirm or deny involvement in other violence.
In August of last year, Panama granted him a pardon over a plot to assassinate President Castro during a visit by the Cuban leader to Panama in 2000.
BBC News 18.05.2004