Infuriated by the latest delay in reuniting Elian Gonzalez with his father, Havana said yesterday the custody dispute may be heading for a "Bay of Pigs" style political disaster for those fighting to keep him in the US.
The Communist Party's daily Granma sharply criticised the six-year-old boy's Miami relatives, who are backed by Florida's powerful Cuban exile community, for escalating the confrontation with US authorities by not surrendering the child this week as ordered.
"They are looking for a political Bay of Pigs," Granma said. The defeat of CIA-trained Cuban exiles at Cuba's Bay of Pigs in 1961 was a military and foreign policy humiliation for the US.