By William C. Mann, .c The Associated Press
WASHINGTON, 16 (AP) - A top Cuban official derided U.S. lawmakers' attempts to grant citizenship to 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez while American politicians on Sunday urged the boy's relatives to travel from the island nation and make their case in a U.S. court that he should return home.
``Congress is supposed to be a serious institution and not an instrument to permit what amounts to a kidnapping of a small boy,'' said Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban National Assembly.
The citizenship idea, he said on NBC's ``Meet the Press,'' is ``absolutely nonsense.''
The Immigration and Naturalization Service ruled the boy must be returned to his father in Cuba. But last week, Attorney General Janet Reno lifted the deadline to give Elian's relatives in Miami a chance to fight in federal court to keep the boy with them.
``Let the father come to the United States, bring his family here, both grandmothers, make his case in court and then have it decided right there,'' Reform Party presidential candidate Pat Buchanan said on ABC's ``This Week.''
Juan Miguel Gonzalez said last week he feels like ``breaking the neck'' of politicians fighting the boy's return to Cuba and has no intention of coming to Miami to pick up his son. ``Miami Cubans would just entangle me in their political games,'' he said.
Buchanan, however, said he did not believe ``for a second that that father is speaking his heart and mind when he knows that his ex-wife and his boy almost died for freedom. I think they want freedom, and I would not be surprise if he wanted it, too.''
The boy's paternal grandmother, Mariela, has said she was willing to go to Florida if she was assured she could pick him up and return immediately to Cuba without becoming embroiled in legal or political problems. Alarcon said the boy's other grandmother feels the same way.
Elian has been in the United States since the Coast Guard found him Nov. 25 clinging to an inner tube off the Florida coast. His mother, stepfather and others died in a failed attempt to reach U.S. shores.
A second presidential hopeful, GOP Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, said he hopes the elder Gonzalez ``would be allowed to come ... inhale that great breath of freedom, to see how is son is being accepted here, take some time for himself, and make the decision (about Elian's future) here on U.S.
soil.''
Speaking from Havana, Alarcon said Juan Miguel Gonzalez is free to go whenever he can be assured of getting his son.
But Fidel Castro's point man on U.S.-Cuban matters added: ``We have gotten the advice of many lawyers, including U.S. officials, that he should not go to that country.'' Among other perils Gonzalez could face, Alarcon said, would be the threat of a congressional subpoena.
Alarcon said anger is real and widespread in Cuba over Elian's continued presence in the United States. He also acknowledged that mass protest demonstrations have been organized by the Castro government, in part to protect U.S. property and diplomats in Havana.
``We are behind the protests because everybody in Cuba is protesting, from the government to the last citizen,'' Alarcon said on ``Fox News Sunday.''
Because of that, he said, the government's only options are either to let protesters vent their anger ``completely spontaneously,'' or ``to channel them in a way to permit you to ensure the safety of the U.S. diplomats'' and other U.S. officials.
On Capitol Hill, there are efforts to make the boy a U.S. citizen. Some lawmakers are weighing resident status for his father.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain suggested Sunday that citizenship for Elian might be the answer.
``We've done that to so many others who have been able to escape,'' the Arizona senator said on NBC. ``Look, the only people that have been returned to Cuba have been criminals. I don't think that Elian falls into that category.''
The idea brought an angry denunciation from Alarcon:
``You cannot impose citizenship upon anybody. And this individual, this 6-year-old boy, has not requested anything, and he cannot, legally speaking. ... This is going too far, really,'' he said on NBC.
McCain disagreed.
Cuba, he said, ``is one of the last places of oppression and repression. To somehow think that you're going to send this boy back to anything but a life of repression and oppression denies history.''
But President Clinton's chief of staff said a special congressional act of citizenship was not proper.
``The best place for this to be decided is in a court of law rather than the halls of Congress,'' John Podesta said on ABC's ``This Week.''
He said the White House's position is ``Let's try to keep this as best we can out of politics.''
AP-NY-01-16-00 1558EST
Copyright 2000 The Associated Press. |