Castro calls U.S. policy `fascist,' warns Cubans of possible attack.(Chicago Tribune)

Byline: Gary Marx

HAVANA _ Calling U.S. foreign policy "fascist," Cuban President Fidel Castro warned his nation Thursday that the United States was preparing for a possible attack against Cuba and vowed the world's only superpower would suffer a bloody defeat.

Castro, speaking before hundreds of thousands of people at the annual May Day rally, said that President Bush and hard-line Cuban exiles in Miami were trying to provoke an incident between the two nations as a pretext for war. He said the United States could try to assassinate him or could launch a full-scale military assault as in Iraq.

"In Miami and Washington they are now discussing where, how and when Cuba will be attacked," the Cuban president said. "It might turn out to be the last of this (Bush) administration's fascist attacks because the struggle would last a very long time."

"We do not want the blood of Cubans and Americans to be shed in a war," he said.

Wearing his typical olive-green military uniform, Castro used his nearly two-hour speech to outline the Cuban revolution's social advances while justifying the recent sentencing of 75 dissidents and the execution of three armed hijackers as necessary because of recent U.S. aggressions.

Castro once again dismissed Cuba's now-gutted dissident movement as "mercenaries on the payroll of Bush's Hitler-like government." He said the firing-squad executions of three men who commandeered a passenger ferry was a painful decision forced on the government by the Bush administration's plan to spark a massive illegal exodus.