HAVANA — The Cuban government warned citizens Tuesday that the risk of armed conflict with the United States, its arch-foe in four decades since President Fidel Castro's revolution, was still latent despite the end of the Cold War.

In a similarly patriotic tone, the government also congratulated Cubans for taking part in military-led preventive measures that assured them a "victorious battle" against Hurricane Georges last month.

"At the hour of danger, as is now a revolutionary tradition, we are all united and the victory belongs to everyone," said the ruling Communist Party's daily newspaper, Granma in an editorial.

The latest call for military preparedness against the United States — a familiar theme for Cubans since the 1959 revolution — was made by Defense Minister Raul Castro, who is also Fidel Castro's brother and designated successor.

"The enemy is powerful and keeps modernizing its arms, as in the times of the Cold War, which is why the real danger of an armed conflict still persists," state media quoted Raul Castro as telling a military council in eastern Cuba.

Although Cuba's traditional "enemy" is the U.S. government, official rhetoric is also often directed against hard-line anti-Castro Cuban exiles living in the United States.

"The ideological conflict between both nations could, under any pretext, transform itself into a large-scale armed aggression from the United States against Cuba," said the state news agency Prensa Latina.

There have been a couple of small-scale actions against Cuban territory launched from U.S. soil this year — the sending of a remote-controlled inflatable boat in July by a Miami-based Cuban exile group, and the landing of two elderly, armed anti-Castro exiles in May.

Cuban security officials quickly confiscated the boat. The two exiles escaped to the hills for a few days after landing on the island, but were then caught and were last known to be in detention.

Last year there was a series of small bomb attacks against Havana hotels, which Cuba blamed on U.S.-based exiles. Analysts said they posed more of an irritation and image problem for Cuba than a real threat to national security.

Most diplomats and analysts think any large-scale military attack on Cuba from the United States is highly unlikely under current circumstances. And the Pentagon has said Cuba's military is so depleted by economic crisis that it is no longer a threat to the United States.

But Castro's government has long expressed its mission in terms of "struggle." The Granma newspaper editorial praised Cubans for their successful "combat" against Hurricane Georges whose "destructive force" represented "a sort of invasion."

Although Georges caused widespread damage in Cuba, particularly to agriculture, it killed just six people, compared to a total of 465 dead as the storm raged through a series of Caribbean countries and the United States.

Relying mostly on military structures, Cuba evacuated 700,000 people and 700,000 heads of cattle prior to Georges' arrival. The relatively small death-toll was also attributed to a weakening of the storm's strength when it hit Cuba.

© Reuters Ltd.