WASHINGTON, 4 (AP) - The Clinton administration has asked the Cuban government to allow the father of 6-year old Elian Gonzalez to personally escort the boy back home if immigration officials decide he should return to the island, a U.S. official said today.
The official, asking not to be identified, said the request does not prejudge the outcome of the case and is merely a contingency plan. Cuban authorities said they would consider the request, the official said. The U.S. request was first disclosed by The Washington Post and The Miami Herald.
According to the official, the presence of the father on U.S. soil would ease concerns among many in the Cuban-American community that his public comments on the issue could reflect the Cuban government position and not his own.
The father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, met with Immigration and Naturalization Service officials in Cuba on Friday, but declined to provide details for fear of harming his case. He has insisted all along that he wants his son to be with him in Cuba.
Elian was discovered aboard an inner tube on Nov. 25 off the Florida coast. He had been aboard a Florida-bound boat that sunk, killing his mother and nine others. He has spent the past seven weeks living with aunts and uncles in South Florida while the INS decides what to do with him. His
Florida relatives are fighting to keep him in Miami.
Elian spent his first day in a U.S. school today. Wearing the school uniform of a white dress shirt and blue pants and carrying a bookbag, Elian arrived at the private Lincoln-Marti School in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood.
Cuban President Fidel Castro has demanded that Elian be returned and has expressed outrage that the immigration service has refused to send him back. The INS has set a Jan. 21 hearing on the case but the U.S. official said a final decision on the case could be reached beforehand.
Elian's father met Monday with representatives of the National Council of Churches in his hometown of Cardenas, a two-hour drive east of Havana. The council representatives promised to press the U.S. government to return the boy.
``We need to help our president see that the issue is a moral one, a humanitarian one,'' said the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, the organization's general secretary. ``We need to be concerned for a small boy rather than politics.''
Campbell spoke with reporters after meeting with Gonzalez and the child's four grandparents and great-grandmother.
Accompanied by Cuban church representatives, Campbell, a Baptist minister, was clearly affected by her hourlong visit inside Gonzalez's modest two-story home, built of brick and cement on an unpaved street where horse-drawn carts are as common as automobiles.
``This is a very loving family,'' Campbell said, appearing to be on the verge of tears. ``We are more convinced than ever that this child belongs with this family.''
She said the council is willing to play a mediation role in the dispute and even to physically transport Elian back to Cuba and turn him over to the Cuban Council of Churches to be returned to his father.
Gonzalez, who has shunned publicity in recent weeks, said he was grateful for the council's efforts. He said he understood his son was well, but that he missed him very much. ``How could I not miss him?'' he asked.
The council is the United States' largest ecumenical organization, representing 35 Protestant and Orthodox denominations comprising 52 million congregants.
AP-NY-01-04-00 1147EST
Copyright 2000 The Associated Press. |