Monday, April 17, 2006

HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): Cubans on Sunday marked the 45th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, when a US backed assault by 1,400 Cuban exiles failed to bring down Fidel Castro's two year old government.

A 21-gun salute was fired from San Carlos de La Cabana Fort in Havana to mark the time when Castro, then 35, declared Cuba to be a socialist country.

Castro, now nearly 80, was absent though as veterans celebrated their fight on the Bay of Pigs' Playa Giron beach on Cuba's south coast, which was stormed by the CIA- organized and trained force on April 17, 1961, two days after disguised US-backed aircraft bombed several Cuban airfields.

The invaders had hoped to make their way to Havana and spark an uprising against Castro's Soviet-aligned communist government.

But they ran into stiff resistance and the incursion failed when President John F. Kennedy declined to send in US reinforcements, wanting to avoid the appearance of a direct US intervention.

Well over 100 fighters from both sides died in the battle.

"Today the decisive battle is against corruption and vice. All that can endanger the revolution. It is necessary to take measures to rectify this, to not get stuck in errors of the socialist block," Bay of Pigs veteran Jesus Dominguez, 68 told AFP.

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