Fox News Online. 11.15 a.m. ET (1624 GMT) February 15, 2000
HAVANA — The father of Cuban boatwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez has sent another personal appeal to the U.S. government in a bid to end his 11-week-old custody dispute with the boy's Cuban-American relatives in Miami.
The letter from Juan Miguel Gonzalez, published in the ruling Cuban Communist Party's newspaper Granma on Tuesday, was addressed to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Commissioner Doris Meissner.
It reiterated the tourism worker's claim to sole custody rights over the motherless six-year-old, urged Washington to implement an INS ruling last month that Elian should be with his father and complained that he was only hearing about new legal obstacles via the media.
"Those who today maintain him kidnapped have no right over him,'' wrote Gonzalez in the letter dated Feb. 14. "The right of custody is only and exclusively mine.''
Elian has been with relatives in Miami since he was rescued from an inner tube off the Florida coast in late November. The boy survived a migrant smuggling trip from Cuba in which his mother and 10 others drowned after their boat capsized.
The family dispute over his future quickly escalated into a major political battle between the government of President Fidel Castro — which backs the father in a patriotic crusade — and anti-communist Cuban-American groups in Florida.
Elian's Miami relatives have successfully blocked immediate implementation of the Jan. 5 INS ruling to return the boy to his father in Cuba by launching legal appeals. A judge is scheduled to hear the U.S. family's case on Feb. 22.
Gonzalez' latest letter was the second he has sent this month to Reno and Meissner.
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