An estimated 150,000 demonstrators have taken part in another government-organised protest in Havana to demand the return of the boy at the centre of a custody battle between the United States and Cuba.

Actors and singers at the rally, one of the biggest so far, said the identity of the boy, Elian Gonzalez, was being murdered.

Elian has been staying with his relatives in Miami since he was found clinging to an inner tube off the Florida coast on 25 November.

His mother, stepfather and nine other would-be illegal immigrants all drowned fleeing Cuba.

Elian's Miami relatives want him to stay with them in the US. But his father wants the US authorities to send his boy home, saying the exile community in Miami is using his son in a political tug-of-war.

Nationalist message

The latest rally, made up of students and workers, was held at the same crossroads where Fidel Castro declared his government Socialist 39 years ago. Today the message has become a nationalist one.

A group of actors read from a prepared script interspersed with songs.

"They don't want to even turn him [Elian] into a North American," one of them shouted.

"They want to turn him into someone without a fatherland."

But behind all the rhetoric, it is clear that Fidel Castro is not about to escalate the dispute when the US government still says the boy should be returned.

Cuban officials say instead they will appeal to US public opinion to try to isolate the Cubans in Miami.