HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) -- In the latest example of Cuban anxiety over U.S.
                  President George W. Bush's administration, Defense Minister Raul Castro said on
                  Sunday that Cuba was better prepared than ever to resist a U.S. invasion, and
                  promised his troops would exact a bloody toll if the country were ever occupied.

                  "They are going to bomb us from above, and we are going to mine them from
                  below," the younger brother of President Fidel Castro said as he described to
                  reporters what would happen if the United States ever attempted to use military
                  force to end decades of non-military confrontation.

                  "Land mines are the arms of the poor, and we have made every kind there is," he
                  said.

                  "Sure they can invade. Sure they can occupy part of the country, and then
                  what?" Castro said in the latest example of the defensive military rhetoric Havana
                  has used since Bush's election.

                  War 'the most terrible thing imaginable'

                  Castro said war was "the most terrible thing imaginable," something he said the
                  United States learned in Vietnam when its soldiers began returning home in body
                  bags, implying it could happen again in Cuba.

                  Castro, speaking moments after seeing off Chinese President Jiang Zemin at the
                  Varadero International Airport, 88 miles (140 kilometers) east of Havana, said
                  entire cities and army divisions would fight from tunnels and shelters dug across
                  the country over the last 20 years.

                  "Santiago, our second city, everything is ready so it can fit underground," he said
                  in comments broadcast by the state media.

                  President Castro, who remained by Jiang's side throughout his four-day stay,
                  also bid farewell to the Chinese leader but he did not speak to the press.

                  Cuban officials and the state media have increasingly referred to a supposed U.S.
                  military threat and the island's defense preparations since Bush won the U.S.
                  presidential election late last year.

                  Rhetoric more shrill since Bush elected

                  While such shrill Cuban militaristic rhetoric was common in the 1980s, it all but
                  disappeared during President Bill Clinton's administration.

                  "Since Bush won the U.S. presidency Raul's public presence has greatly
                  increased and he's been signaling Washington not to use force to settle their
                  differences," a diplomat said. "They think Miami-based exiles want war and have
                  a great deal of influence with the new president."

                  But other diplomats were skeptical that the United States would use military
                  force against Cuba, speculating the government was simply using the Republican
                  administration to whip up nationalism and domestic support.

                  Castro also lambasted the Bush administration's efforts to have the
                  communist-run island's human rights record condemned.

                  Cuba and the United States are currently confronting each other at the United
                  Nations' annual human rights hearings in Geneva, where a vote on the situation in
                  Cuba is expected later this week.

                  Defense Minister Castro questioned the Bush administration's legitimacy after last
                  year's controversial presidential vote, and charged it was supporting Israeli
                  human rights violations against Palestinians and remaining mum over abuses in
                  "some Arab countries, where they cut off heads, including women's, for
                  adultery."

                  Asked about a January statement that the United States would be well advised to
                  settle its differences with Cuba before Fidel Castro dies, Raul Castro, his
                  brother's official number two, said, "the authority Fidel has, no one else will
                  have. That's why it will be easier to work things out with him."

                     Copyright 2001 Reuters.