WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- The Chairman of the Republican National Committee today called on Democrat presidential candidates Al Gore and Bill Bradley, and DNC Chairmen Joe Andrew and Ed Rendell, to publicly take a position on whether the INS should send refugee Elian Gonzalez back to
Castro's Cuba.
"I realize your judgment on this may be different from mine," Nicholson said, "but surely you have an opinion -- and the voters deserve to know what that opinion is. Do you support the Clinton administration's decision to let INS bureaucrats send Elian back to Communist Cuba --
without letting him have his day in court?"
"Leadership requires making tough calls," Nicholson added. "America's voters deserve to know where you stand on this vital humanitarian issue."
On Wednesday, Nicholson offered to personally pay the cost to bring Elian's entire family to Miami, "so that we can learn for sure what his father wants -- free of Communist coercion." Nicholson said that once that was established, "we should let an impartial and open court decide
this case -- not Clinton-Gore bureaucrats.
"The INS has no business deciding child custody cases," Nicholson said.
"Elian's fate should be decided in a in a manner consistent with the principles of human rights, political asylum and parental rights as freely expressed," Nicholson added.
"Early on in this saga, Clinton promised that the question of whether Elian stays in America or is sent back to Communist Cuba would be decided on free soil by an American court. Are Gore, Bradley and Andrew troubled by Clinton's breaking of this promise? Do they care about Elian and what
his life will be like if he is sent back to live in a police state? Do they even understand that Cuba is a police state? And what do they think about the incontrovertible fact that Elian's mother died in the attempt to give her son freedom? Democrat leaders have an obligation to answer these
questions."
SOURCE Republican National Committee
CO: Republican National Committee
ST: District of Columbia, Cuba
IN:
SU: EXE CPN
01/06/2000 13:53 EST http://www.prnewswire.com |