By The Associated Press

          HAVANA, Cuba (AP) -- The communist government railed against
          Cuban exiles who backed a Miami judge's decision to keep Elian
          Gonzalez in the United States, calling them ``beasts'' without a country.

          Speaking to thousands of protesters gathered at the latest rally in Cuba's
          monthlong campaign for the boy's repatriation, student leader Hassan
          Perez said a Miami court had given custody of the boy to a relative in
          Miami rather than uphold an earlier decision by the U.S. Immigration and
          Naturalization Service to return the 6-year-old to his father in Cuba by
          Friday.

          The protesters in the audience looked stunned.

          The order issued Monday by Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Rosa
          Rodriguez was ``illegal and arbitrary,'' charged Perez, president of the
          government's Federation of University Students and a communist deputy
          in Cuba's National Assembly, or parliament.

          ``We have seen the lack of reason and unbalanced hysteria of an
          ever-shrinking minority of repugnant subjects who have no fatherland,
          who dare to derail the decision of the government of the most powerful
          nation on the planet,'' Perez told the crowd outside the American mission
          in Havana. Perez is often called upon to deliver the government's central
          message at the protests.

          ``Who are these beasts whose hearts do not hear, who fight to keep a
          child who has become a world symbol?'' he asked. The Cuban exiles in
          Miami, he said, will use ``all of their resources to impede the child's
          return.''

          The temporary protective order sets a March 6 hearing for Rodriguez to
          hear arguments by Elian's Miami relatives, who are seeking to keep him
          in the United States.

          Elian was found late November clinging to an inner tube off Florida's
          coast. His mother was lost at sea in the apparent attempt to emigrate
          illegally to the United States.

          By the time the news was being announced in Miami late Monday
          afternoon, thousands were already crowding around the U.S. Interests
          Section on Havana's main coastal highway for another pro-Elian rally.

          ``I think the idea is absurd,'' Cuban protester Leonil Feliu said of the
          judge's ruling. ``What they are doing is prolonging the process. They
          know at the end of the day that they have to bring him to Cuba. All they
          are doing is lengthening the inevitable.''