By Pascal Fletcher
HAVANA, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Cuban officials heaped insults on Wednesday on a U.S. Roman Catholic nun who, after Elian Gonzalez and his grandmothers met in her home, said the Cuban boy should remain with his relatives in the United States.
The officials, especially Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban National Assembly, accused Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin of having a ``fascist ideology'' and a ``demonic attitude.''
``This lady is really acting as one of the kidnappers, as one of the anti-Cuba mafia,'' Alarcon said, appearing with other officials and Elian's maternal and paternal grandmothers in a programme broadcast live by Cuban state television.
The other officials present, Miguel Alvarez and Iroel Sanchez, made similar comments.
The Dominican nun, president of Barry University, became a target for Cuba's communist government after she allowed her home in Miami to be the scene on Jan. 26 of a reunion between 6-year-old Elian and his grandmothers, Mariel Quintana and Raquel Rodriguez.
Almost immediately afterward, she said she felt Elian should stay in the United States with his relatives.
Cuban President Fidel Castro's government has accused the Miami relatives of Elian and their Cuban exile backers of ``kidnapping'' the boy since he was rescued off Florida on Nov. 25 after surviving a shipwreck in which his mother drowned.
Elian's great-uncle and other relatives in Miami want to keep the boy there with them, while his father in communist-ruled Cuba, backed by Castro's government, is insisting he be handed back to him.
The boy's case still remains enmeshed in legal wrangling despite a U.S. Immigration and Naturalisation Service ruling that he should be returned to his father.
``BLESSED BY THE DEVIL''
In a previous live television appearance in Cuba on Tuesday, Elian's grandmothers were egged on by journalists for Cuba's state media to lambaste O'Laughlin. They called her ``blessed by the devil.''
Cuba's onslaught against the U.S. nun followed an article she wrote that appeared in The New York Times on Tuesday.
``I came to feel the Cuban government was attempting to exert control over these events,'' she wrote. ``Could we send the boy back to a climate that may be full of fear without at least a fair hearing in a family court?'' she asked.
O'Laughlin also wrote that she had felt a strong bond between Elian and the Miami cousin who has been looking after him since his mother died. ``I saw and felt, at that moment, how wrong it would be to return Elian hastily to Cuba,'' she said.
Alarcon sought to ridicule the arguments she expressed in the newspaper. ``Where is this spirit of evil, this powerful presence which in the middle of this person's mansion was being applied by the Cuban government?'' he asked.
He said Elian's grandmothers had gone to the meeting place with a Cuban Anglican priest, Oden Marichal but met their grandson alone inside O'Laughlin's house.
He repeated a Cuban government charge that O'Laughlin had unfairly taken a mobile phone from the boy when he was trying to talk to his father in Cuba during the meeting.
``What has that got to do with Christianity or any religion? This is pure Nazi-fascist tactics,'' he said.
He accused O'Laughlin of supporting a proposal for Congress
to grant Elian U.S. citizenship but noted there was opposition to such a move in the United States. ``She is not going to convert anyone with her fascist ideology and demonic attitude, however much she disguises herself as a nun,'' Alarcon said.
22:33 02-02-00
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