By Andrew Cawthorne
HAVANA, Jan 14 (Reuters) - More than 100,000 Cuban mothers paraded noisily past the U.S. diplomatic mission on Friday as President Fidel Castro's government promised to intensify its fight to reclaim 6-year-old shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez.
Both of Elian's grandmothers, hundreds of pregnant women, thousands of children, and Castro's sister-in-law, also took part in the government-organised march along Havana's picturesque seafront Malecon boulevard.
``I am here so the United States can see how our people protest. They must free Elian!'' said Nayanci Carrera, who is 8 1/2 months pregnant, as she began the march helped by a nurse.
Singing, waving flags, and chanting ``Send our son back!'' the women filed slowly down the Malecon and past the imposing U.S. Interests Section, as cordons of police kept watch.
The march was the latest in a relentless series of protests by Cuba over the case since Elian was rescued at sea by U.S. fishermen Nov. 25, and taken in by relatives in Miami.
His mother, and 10 other illegal migrants, died when their boat capsized in a bid to flee Cuba for the United States. Elian survived two days and nights on a rubber inner tube.
His father Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who was divorced from his mother, has demanded his return to Cuba, prompting a custody dispute that has pitted Castro's government against its archenemies in Florida's Cuban-American community.
The largest protests, some drawing more than a quarter of a million people, have been outside the Interests Section, Washington's unofficial embassy here. The two nations do not have formal diplomatic ties.
Cuban frustration over the case hit a new high on Friday as hopes evaporated that the U.S. Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) would implement a ruling last week to return Elian to his father by a Friday deadline. The INS extended that deadline indefinitely to allow time for a federal
court to hear a challenge to INS plans to send Elian home.
``Tonight at midnight is the limit promised by the U.S. government authorities to return the boy to his family and his fatherland. ... The terrorist mafia in Miami and the extreme right of the U.S. Congress have blocked it,'' the ruling Communist Party's daily Granma wrote in an editorial.
Granma, the voice of Castro's government, said the passing of the deadline would represent ``the opening of a new stage of battle'' by Havana to repatriate the boy.
``No U.S. authority is capable of assuring anything about the boy's return,'' Granma said, even though ``the health and sufferings of the boy demand it.''
Friday's march was again meticulously organised by the authorities, with buses bringing the women in from homes and workplaces, and march organisers lining them up along the Malecon in carefully choreographed blocks.
The march was led by Elian's grandmothers and the president of Cuba's state-affiliated Women's Federation, Vilma Espin, who is also Castro's sister-in-law. The second family of Elian's father, including his current wife and their infant son, were near the front of the demonstration.
Paternal grandmother Maria de la Quintana told reporters at the march that if necessary she would go to Florida to pick up Elian: ``If I have to go, I will go and look for him and bring him back here with us so he can be happy,'' she said.
There appeared to be no concrete plans for any of Elian's family members to travel to Florida, however. Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, ruled out the trip again this week, saying it would achieve nothing and snare him in legal traps.
In an interview broadcast on ABC's ``Nightline'' programme on Thursday, the father accused his Miami relatives of ``child abuse'' and said, ``Sometimes what I would like to do is go down there with a rifle -- I don't know -- to get rid of how many people.''
Elian's maternal grandmother, Rafael Rodriguez, cried as she marched. She had said on Thursday her daughter's dying wish would have been to reunite Elian with his family in Cuba.
During Friday's protest, marching songs and patriotic speeches blared from loudspeakers strung up on lampposts along the seafront. A helicopter flew overhead, beaming live images to the nation's two television channels, both state-run.
``We are here because we want to,'' said health worker and mother-of-two Maria Eugenia Diaz, 48. ``This is a genuine feeling we have as mothers. Elian is like one of our own children.''
Cuban authorities said 150,000 students, workers and intellectuals would take part on Saturday in another protest, this time on the same Havana street corner where Castro proclaimed the socialist character of his revolution in 1961.
16:27 01-14-00
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