GUANTANAMO, Cuba -- (AP) -- Gen. Raul Castro, Fidel Castro's younger brother and Cuba's defense minister, looked out Saturday over the U.S. naval base where prisoners from the war in Afghanistan are being held.

 "Relations with the United States are unpredictable,'' Castro told a small group of international journalists at the Malones lookout, which provides a spectacular panorama of the U.S. installation in southeastern Cuba.

 He said that for now the Cuban government would not object to the use of the base to hold the prisoners -- even though for decades Havana has protested the U.S.
 presence. Raul Castro is his brother's chosen successor as Cuba's head of state.

 The younger Castro made his unannounced stop at the lookout after leading a weekly political rally in the nearby town of San Antonio, in Guantanamo province. The rally protested U.S. policy toward Cuba and demanded release of five Cubans convicted of espionage charges in Miami last year.

 Castro repeated earlier assurances by other Cuban military officials that the presence of Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners at the base was no threat to Cuba's national
 security and that Cuba did not plan any extra security measures. In the unlikely event that any prisoner escapes and makes it over the fence and into Cuban territory,
 Cuba would capture and return the prisoner to the U.S. armed forces, Castro said.

                                    © 2002