Yahoo! April 28, 2000
Castro: Accept More Elian Friends
By John Rice, Associated Press Writer.
HAVANA (AP) - Cuban President Fidel Castro is accusing U.S. officials of limiting access to Elian Gonzalez by Cuban diplomats and of hindering efforts by Cuban friends to help him.
``There have been nothing but obstacles and difficulties of all kinds,'' Castro complained Thursday at Havana's Jose Marti International Airport after four children, four of their parents and Elian's doctor flew to the United States.
He complained that the U.S. State Department was limiting Cuban diplomatic access to the 6-year-old shipwreck survivor, who is staying at the Wye River conference center 70 miles outside Washington, D.C. - well beyond the 25 miles Cuban diplomats are allowed to travel from the capital without
special permission.
``The result is they are kidnapped there,'' Castro said, adding that the Cubans could have chosen another site closer to Washington but relied on the good faith of U.S. officials.
Castro also complained that U.S. officials had told Cuba that Elian's physician, Dr. Caridad Ponce de Leon, cannot practice medicine at the Maryland site under state law.
Cuban state television later reported that on her arrival, U.S. Customs confiscated medicines for Elian from the doctor.
Cuban officials are trying to create a little bit of Elian's hometown, Cardenas, at Wye River, where the boy is staying while a court considers efforts by his Miami relatives to seek political asylum against his father's wishes.
``They have said that we want to move Cardenas to the United States,'' Castro said, complaining about U.S. refusal to grant visas to all 31 people Cuba had proposed to help Elian recover from trauma, catch up with schoolwork and renew relations with his friends.
Castro said that if the family had to wait a month or more for a court ruling allowing Elian to return, ``it would be better if he were with people that he knew.''
He complained that the U.S. limited the Cubans to 15-day visas so that the children who visit Elian would have to be rotated, preventing a stable, school-like environment.
``They are crazy things, absurd, ridiculous, which cannot contribute anything to helping the boy,'' Castro said.
Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon, who has overseen much of Cuba's campaign for Elian's return, said sending the children ``is the only way that you can have an idea of a school for a little boy that has the right to return a life as normal as possible.''
``I really prefer to believe that the American public would not tolerate having this issue dragging on and on,'' he told The Associated Press, adding that it ``sends a terrible message'' to U.S. families trying to recover children being held abroad.
He ridiculed a proposal by Republican presidential candidate Gov. George W. Bush (news - web sites) that U.S. officials should convince the father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, to remain in the United States.
``I don't think it is the job of any government to interfere in what is a fundamental human right ... that everybody has a right to live in his own country or to choose his own nationality,'' Alarcon said.
U.S. Spends $500K on Elian Case
By Michael J. Sniffen, Associated Press Writer.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Justice Department has spent more than $578,000 on the Elian Gonzalez case, including Saturday's raid, since the 6-year-old Cuban boy was plucked from the Atlantic Ocean last Thanksgiving, officials said Thursday.
The most recent Miami city cost figures were $1 million through last Thursday, two days before the raid and the street disorders it set off. Nearly 80 percent of that was for police overtime.
At her weekly news conference Thursday, Attorney General Janet Reno said the Border Patrol agents, who carried automatic weapons on the early morning raid, ``had to be in force.'' As reasons, she cited the hostile crowd of Cuban exiles outside and the family, which had stopped saying it would
stand aside and had ``started talking in the last days about `you're going to have to use force to take the child'.''
``There had to be a show of force, not a use of force, to show that we were in control,'' Reno said.
Elian's great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez and his family, who cared for the boy for five months, had refused to obey federal orders to turn him over his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who had come from Cuba to retrieve him.
A senior Justice official also has said four or five men acting as bodyguards for the family had permits to carry concealed weapons, there were reports of guns in a house behind Lazaro's, and Lazaro's daughter, Marisleysis Gonzalez, warned a federal official that ``there are more than cameras in
the house.''
Reno knew photographers were present to record the raid. The American people ``don't like the picture any more than I do,'' Reno said referring to an Associated Press photo of a uniformed agent holding an automatic weapon near an obviously frightened Elian.
``They don't like the thought of having to take a little boy to his father in this fashion any more than I do,'' Reno said. ``It may not be the prettiest thing in the world, but it is effective.''
But law enforcement experience ``demonstrates that the show of force does so much to protect life, rather than harm life,'' Reno said.
Preliminary Justice Department figures, through Monday, showed the largest spending was $374,000 for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. That included the cost of training and housing 131 immigration agents who participated in the raid and Elian's government airplane flight to Washington
and the airplane that would have taken Lazaro Gonzalez to Washington had he agreed to a peaceful transfer.
U.S. marshals, who provided 20 deputies for the raid and security for Elian's father in Washington since April 6 and the entire family since Saturday, spent $161,000.
Justice's Community Relations Service spent $25,000 on mediators and conciliators who worked to calm the crowd and to set up negotiating sessions with the family.
U.S. attorneys in Miami and Atlanta and Justice's civil division spent a combined $18,000 on legal work.
The figures included overtime but not regular salaries which would have been paid anyway. They also included copying costs and expenses for psychiatric consultants.
Justice was awaiting a Defense Department bill for the three nights Juan Miguel Gonzalez' family spent at Andrew Air Force Base. The Pentagon said Thursday that would total $540.
At 4 a.m. Saturday and even after that, Reno told Aaron Podhurst, a Miami lawyer who served as an intermediary with her during last-ditch negotiations, that they were ``out of time.''
She ordered the raid then because ``this seemed to be the safest time possible.''
``There were very few people outside the house,'' Reno said. ``If we did not go, people were sure to find out that we were prepared to go, and the crowd would gather and keep a vigil and make it more difficult for the future.''
Copyright © 2000 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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