HAVANA -- Cuban President Fidel Castro on Sunday demanded the United
                  States return a 5-year-old Cuban boy, rescued from waters off Florida on
                  Thanksgiving, to his father within three days.

                  Elian Gonzalez has been at the center of an emotion-charged custody dispute between
                  the two political enemies after he survived an attempt by several Cuban
                  refugees to sail to Florida last week. Ten Cubans, including the boy's
                  mother, drowned when the boat sank: Elian was found clinging to an inner
                  tube off Fort Lauderdale.

                  Castro compared the case to a kidnapping. He said U.S. authorities should
                  return the boy within 72 hours -- "Because if not, there are going to be
                  millions of people in the street demanding the freedom of the boy, who will
                  not stop until they send him back," he told Cuban state television early
                  Sunday.

                  Elian is now staying with relatives in Florida. His father, Juan Gonzalez, who
                  remained in Cuba, wants to bring the child home. The boy's parents were
                  divorced.

                  The comments by Cuba's veteran communist leader upped the political
                  stakes in the case. They follow those of several top Cuban officials including
                  a Friday statement by the president of his National Assembly.

                  "There is nothing to negotiate, there is nothing to discuss in any court or any
                  other forum," Ricardo Alarcon told Cuban television. "No one can question
                  that a father is the person who has the right to his minor children."

                  Castro spoke at Havana's airport at a ceremony to greet Cuba's returning
                  delegation from the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. He said
                  the "state of irritation" among the island's 11 million people over the case
                  was unprecedented.

                  "So I really do suggest to them that they are prudent, so as to avoid the risks
                  of this affair, both for them and also for us, because I know and I feel the
                  state of emotion, and enough is enough," he added.

                  Agreements signed in 1994 and 1995 call for Cuba to try to stop illegal
                  departures from the island and for the United States to repatriate illegal
                  migrants picked up at sea. Alarcon said the agreements called for "an end to
                  the practice of admitting all who arrive illegally in the United States."

                  Alarcon is scheduled to lead a Cuban delegation at talks on immigration with
                  U.S. officials December 13.