Fidel Castro, who took control of Cuba in 1959, rebuffed repeated US attempts to oust him and survived communism’s demise almost everywhere else, temporarily relinquished his presidential powers to his brother Raul last night because of surgery.

Fidel Castro directed a vast protest march past the US mission in Havana, leading many thousands of cheering Cubans who carried signs equating US President George Bush with Adolf Hitler and accused the United States of preparing to free one of the hemisphere’s worst terrorists.

Fidel Castro warned President George Bush today against launching a military attack on Cuba if the current American measures aimed at dislodging him don’t succeed, saying it would provoke a mass exodus and an all-out ground war.

Fidel Castro has led more than a million people on a march marking the start of the Cuban revolution nearly a half-century ago.