By Joanne Kenen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Clinton Tuesday urged Congress to put off its hurried attempt to grant citizenship to a six-year-old Cuban boy enmeshed in a political tug-of-war with Cuba, saying the courts must decide the case.
``At a minimum I would like to see this court case played out before the Congress takes action,'' Clinton said when asked about the case of Elian Gonzalez, who survived a shipwreck off the Florida coast two months ago in which his mother drowned.
As he spoke, Elian's two grandmothers, on a mission from Cuba, met sympathetic lawmakers on Capitol Hill to press their argument that Elian be returned to his father on the communist-ruled island.
The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has ruled that Elian should be reunited with his father, who had joint custody of the boy with his estranged wife.
But Elian's relatives in Miami have filed a suit in federal court demanding a political asylum hearing, saying the boy should not be returned to grow up in a communist country. It is not clear when that suit will be heard.
The grandmothers, who said they were carrying a letter for Clinton urging his support, failed in their attempt to meet the boy in Miami on Monday, refusing to go to the home of the relatives who have been caring for him there.
``I am not up to a party. I just want to talk to my grandson alone and they wouldn't let us do it,'' Elian's maternal grandmother Mariela Quintana told reporters after meeting Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat.
The Miami relatives invited the grandmothers to a Cuban- style dinner and a crowd of about 200 Cuban Americans opposed to sending him back to Cuba gathered outside the house, along with a horde of reporters.
``He is Cuban. He has to live in Cuba and go back to Cuba,'' Quintana said. She added that she and the paternal grandmother Raquel Rodriguez still hoped to be able to see the boy and that the INS was trying to work out arrangements.
Jackson Lee described as ``inappropriate'' the initiative, mainly by Republicans, being hastened through Congress to give Elian citizenship or residency. ``This is a six-year-old boy who cannot speak for himself,'' she said.
``This is not a Fidel Castro versus the United States issue ... this is a family issue,'' she said. Cuban President Castro has accused the boy's relatives of kidnapping him and has made a national crusade of bringing the child back to Cuba.
Clinton, answering questions during an event at the White House to discuss the federal budget, said: ``I think we ought to try to let the legal system take its course,''
He declined to say if he would veto any bill Congress approved on the boy's status. ``I have not decided what to do and I wouldn't rule that out,'' he said.
Clinton condemned the politicization of the case and the fact that Elian was being ``competed for in a way that is unusual for a 6-year-old child.''
Many lawmakers and candidates for the November presidential election, aware of the politically potent Cuban community in Florida, have taken a position, with Republicans demanding he be allowed to live ``in freedom'' in the United States.
Clinton remarked: ``And I know, maybe it's just because I'm not running for anything, but I just somehow wish that whatever is best for this child can be done.''
Without explicitly backing his return, he added: ``Plainly he would have more economic opportunity in this country, but all the evidence indicates that his father genuinely loves him and spent a great deal of time with him back in Cuba.''
He added: ``I suppose I have tended to think of this child more from the point of view of a parent than anything else.''
He said the issue should be seen outside the ``combustible, emotional nature of our relations with Cuba'' and there should be a study of whether the government had the right mechanisms for handling such cases for the child's best interests.
Members of the Miami family planned to fly to Washington on Tuesday and meet the grandmothers there, but the snow storm delayed their departure from Miami and it was not clear when they would arrive in the capital.
Elian himself was reported by family friends to be disappointed he did not see his grandmothers on Monday. He had a day off school on Tuesday as he did not feel well.
14:27 01-25-00
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