Cuban President Fidel Castro spoke to an estimated 1.4 million protesters who marched past the US mission in Havana yesterday in protest over its broadcasting of propaganda messages.
The communist leader, who turns 80 in August, was dressed in his trademark military fatigues and green cap, but did not join the march along Havana's Malecon seafront, as he has in previous protests.
Earlier this week, Castro condemned the US for broadcasting illuminated propaganda messages on the building of its mission in Havana.
Castro said no government in the world could accept such a "perverse violation of its dignity and sovereignty" and warned there would be a firm, though peaceful, Cuban response.
An estimated 1.4 million protesters marched past the US mission in Havana yesterday
The two governments, bitter enemies since Castro came to power in a 1959 revolution, do not have formal diplomatic relations and are represented by interests offices opened in each other's capital during the Carter administration.
Washington has enforced sanctions against Cuba since 1962.
"The government of the United States ... is planning to force a rupture in the current minimum diplomatic links with Cuba. The gross provocations by its Interests Section in Havana can have no other purpose," Castro said in his speech.
Castro also denounced President George W. Bush's government for harboring anti-Castro extremists in the United States and wanting to free Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban-born former CIA operative who has been held by the United States since May for illegally entering the country.
"Bush fascist, condemn the terrorist," thousands of Cuban students, workers and military officers chanted as they marched along the Havana waterfront waving Cuban flags.
Posada is wanted by Cuba and Venezuela for the blowing up of a Cuban commercial airliner off Barbados in 1976 that killed all 73 people aboard. Cuba also blames him for a wave of blasts in Havana hotels and night spots in 1997.
US authorities have rejected a Venezuelan extradition request for Posada, who escaped from a Caracas jail in 1985.
"We're here to show the United States it can't mess with the Cuban people," said Dismar, an adolescent from the poor Havana suburb of Arroyo Naranjo up since 4 a.m. for the demo.