MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Cuba celebrates 45th anniversary of Bay of Pigs victory

Forty-five years after the Cuban communist regime successfully defeated a Untied States supported invasion in the Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro accused Washington of continued harassment and pledged he would never “beg” the US for peace.

Dressed in his customary olive-drab uniform Castro presided over Wednesday night's event marking the anniversary of his regime's 1961 victory in the Bay of Pigs, more commonly known as Giron Beach.

"It has been an unending battle for 45 years", said Castro at Havana's Karl Marx Theatre before a crowd of over 3,000 invited guests, many of them Giron beach veterans.

He added that since the foiled invasion by CIA-trained Cuban exiles "there has not been a single day of peace, nor will there be, nor do we ask for it".

"We're not provoking war, nor will we provoke war, but we will never beg for peace from the US which has deprived us of that goal for so long, almost half a century".

Despite those 45 years of confrontation with Washington Castro said "Cuba is doing better than ever". But he also claimed that U.S. officials "have never once ceased to carry out terrorism plans, attacks, and disruptive actions".

However Castro highlighted the shift in Latin America's relations with Washington.

"The hemisphere is falling from their (U.S.) hands, they cannot continue subjugating peoples ... and the feeling of independence grows stronger every day" Castro said.

Much of Latin America has voted in recent years for left wing or populist governments critical of U.S. policies in the world.

Castro also blasted United States for the conflict in Iraq saying that "the damage to the world caused by the empire is of planetary proportions", adding that the Iraqi insurgency has left Washington "stalled on a dead-end alley".

The Cuban dictator warned that the Bush administration's approach toward Tehran's nuclear program, and a possible preventive U.S. military strike "could lead to a global conflagration with no margin to avert it".

"Destabilization could become universal" if Middle East turmoil and soaring oil prices remain out of control, warned Castro who has ruled Cuba with an iron hand since 1959.