Cuba demands US arrest 'bomber'

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 bombing

He 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.