Castro targets White House during revolution anniversary speech.

Publication: South Florida Sun-Sentinel (via Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service)

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COPYRIGHT 2005 South Florida Sun-Sentinal

Byline: Vanessa Bauza

HAVANA _ President Fidel Castro commemorated the 52nd anniversary of his revolution by taking aim at his nemesis, the Bush administration, and bitterly accusing it of financing and promoting recent anti-government dissident demonstrations.

Addressing an auditorium full of Communist Party leaders and handpicked supporters, Castro called the top U.S. diplomat in Havana a "grotesque character," and sternly warned that future protests planned by Cuba's dissidents will be thwarted "as many times as necessary."

"The supposed opposition in Cuba does not exist except in the feverish minds of the Cuban-American mafia and the bureaucrats of the White House and the State Department," Castro said during a four-hour speech at Havana's Karl Marx Theater on Tuesday night. "They deceive themselves ... with their own lies."

He referred to two demonstrations this month in which dozens of dissidents were detained after public clashes with...

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