CUBANET ... CUBANEWS

April 21, 2000



Candidates go to ground in bad news week

By Mark Steyn, The Electronic Telegraph, UK. April 21, 2000

HAPPY anniversary: Columbine, Oklahoma City, Waco. All the big ones fall this week: the Bay of Pigs, Easter. If Janet Reno had thought about it, the minute that Cuban kid washed up on Florida's shores she should have pencilled this week on the calendar and booked her vacation in Acapulco, or whatever it is America's inscrutable Attorney-General does to relax.

But April is the cruellest month and, having dithered and dawdled and let those Cuban-Americans make all the running since November, it was inevitable that Miss Reno would find herself in Waco Week with yet another kid problem. Just the one this time, and an increasingly creepy specimen to judge from that video his Miami relatives released the other day.

Elian doesn't want to go back to Cuba and informed his father with Clintonesque finger wagging. Translated from the Spanish, it boils down to: "I will not have parental relations with that man." So in this interlude between Waco Wednesday and Easter Sunday the Attorney-General has to figure out her next move. She didn't want to send the Feds in on the anniversary of her bloodiest bungle.

On the other hand, springing the kid over Easter isn't such a good idea, given that Marisleysis, his 21-year-old cousin and self-described "surrogate mother", claims images of the Virgin Mary are appearing in the mirror of Elian's bedroom and that some of the more excitable Elianistas jumping up and down in the street regard him as a new Christ child.

"God gave His hand to Elian," says Alina Gonzalez (no relation). "He's a miracle child," says Elvira Gonzalez (also no relation), who compares Elian to Moses, who also started out on a raft, floating down the Nile. As for the presidential election, that's pretty much on hold. Al Gore's gone to ground after his pandering to the Miami mob backfired.

Poor old Al got cocky. It never occurred to him that, even in the Clinton era, it's still possible to over-pander. And, with Al enrolled in the Federal Candidate Protection Programme, Dubya has also dropped off the radar screen, cutting back his hectic schedule to spend more time playing video golf on his palm pilot.

Dubya, never one to over-tax himself, is grateful for the intermission. Al, who was looking forward to boring the pants off the electors 24 hours a day between now and November, must be champing at the bit. He no longer cares what happens to the kid as long as it happens quickly.

But Elian's locked in the embrace of the appeals system and he'll be around a while yet. Even if Miss Reno seizes the boy to return him to dad, there are now certain operational difficulties: the court has ruled that Elian must stay in America, and the Cuban Interests Section in Maryland, where Juan Miguel is currently holed up, is technically Cuban soil.

Meanwhile, with each victory Great-Uncle Lazaro becomes more emboldened. But if you were a swaggering, drunk-driving mob-inciter with no legal custody who doesn't even speak English but who'd succeeded in cowing the chief law enforcement official of the most powerful nation on earth, wouldn't you be emboldened?

Janet Reno is easily the most influential political figure of the past decade. Her bloodbath at Waco in 1993 helped to fire up the conservative talk-radio guys who, in turn, galvanised the "angry white male" vote that swept Newt Gingrich into power in 1994. It also led to the Oklahoma bombing in 1995, and Clinton cannily used that to stick it to the "Right-wing hate-mongers" and regain control of his presidency.

Since then, the Attorney-General has managed to ward off the more awkward inquiries into her boss, but has also allowed his administration to become mired in interminable inconclusive investigations. And now Al Gore finds that, like little Elian and little Bill, his fate too depends on big Janet.

Suppose she blows it yet again? It's not just hordes of obscure Cuban-Americans camped outside that house. There are real live celebrities, too: Gloria Estefan, Andy Garcia and, for all Al knows, Desi Arnaz, Xavier Cugat and Carmen Miranda. Suppose Miss Reno goes in guns a-blazing? And suppose, when the smoke clears, Ms Estefan and Mr Garcia are lying face down in the smouldering rubble?

Al can only marvel. For years he's shamelessly exploited ill-fated relatives: his car-struck son in the '92 convention speech; his cancer-felled sister in his '96 speech. For this year he was no doubt already riffling through his Rolodex of stricken cousins. Now he finds he's up against Lazaro Gonzalez, a guy who exploits relatives even more shamelessly than he does.

Who knows? Maybe Al also has a great-nephew in Cuba - little Alian Gorzalez. If so, I'll bet he's wishing he'd sent the kid an inner tube and a map of the Florida coastline. He'd have the convention speech to end them all.

Clinton hope of Cuba deal is marred by Elian crisis

By Toby Harnden in Miami, The Electronic Telegraph, UK. April 21, 2000

THE latest legal twist in the case of the six-year-old Cuban castaway is threatening to develop into a crisis for the American government and could destroy President Clinton's hopes of scoring a major foreign policy success in the twilight days of his presidency.

Mr Clinton had hoped to lift the trade embargo imposed on the Fidel Castro regime 39 years ago. Cuba is one of the policy areas on which Mr Clinton's search for a "legacy" has focused. Ending the embargo imposed by President Kennedy could be seen as bringing the last battle of the Cold War to an end.

Mr Clinton is said to be almost obsessed that historians should remember his eight years in the White House for more than the Monica Lewinsky scandal. But by ruling that Elian Gonzalez should remain in the United States, the 11th Circuit Appeals Court has thrown into doubt whether the boy will ever be returned to his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, as both Mr Clinton and President Castro wish.

The same court will decide next month whether Elian can be granted asylum. If it rules against the Immigration and Naturalisation Service, which opposes asylum, the case could return to the family courts and be extended for months.

For Mr Clinton and Janet Reno, the Attorney-General, it was a bitter irony that the court's decision fell on the seventh anniversary of the end of the Waco siege, when 82 people died in a fire, and on the fifth anniversary of the Oklahoma bomb, when 168 people were killed.

While Mr Clinton says he does not want to politicise the Elian case, he has seized on the chance to improve relations with Dr Castro. The fear for Mr Clinton is that the Elian case continues into November, scuppering any chance of an accord with Cuba and damaging the presidential hopes of Vice-President Al Gore, whose election to the White House could be another important element of the Clinton legacy.

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2000. Terms & Conditions of reading.

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