By Anita Snow, .c The Associated Press
HAVANA, 16 (AP) - Growing impatient with 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez's extended U.S. stay, Cuba's foreign minister left for Europe on Sunday to seek support for the boy's return.
``It is inconceivable and unacceptable that this small child remains kidnapped,'' Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told Cuba's Prensa Latina news service before leaving. He was to visit Italy, San Marino, France, Denmark and Russia and also meet with Vatican and Spanish officials before
returning to Cuban on Jan. 28.
As for Cuba's strategy back home, ``Our mobilizations will continue,'' Perez Roque said, according to the news agency. ``No one should make the mistake to think that we are going to get tired.''
There were no mass demonstrations scheduled for Sunday. But over the weekend, Fidel Castro's communist government appeared to be gearing up for more and larger protests in the days to come.
Several dozen workers wearing T-shirts emblazoned with Elian's portrait mixed and poured cement for a new concrete plaza outside the U.S. Interests Section, where many of the rallies to demand Elian's repatriation have been held.
Some of the largest protests in recent weeks were held Friday and Saturday. In the first demonstration, more than 100,000 Cuban mothers marched outside the American mission. On Saturday, more than 150,000 protesters held an angry political rally on the site where Castro defined the Cuban
revolution as socialist almost four decades ago.
Elian was found clinging to inner tube off the coat of Florida on Nov. 25 after his mother, stepfather and others died in a failed attempt to reach U.S. shores. Since then he has been the subject of a fierce international custody battle between his father, who is in Cuba, and his paternal
great-uncle, who has temporary custody of the boy in Miami.
The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service ruled that the child should be reunited with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. But Elian's Miami relatives and others who oppose Elian's return to Cuba have launched a series of legal moves aimed at delaying or stopping his repatriation, and Cuba
has become increasingly fed up with delays in the boy's return.
Both President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno supported the INS decision, but Cuban officials complain that American officials have done nothing to enforce the ruling.
The Miami relatives are expected to take their case to federal court in Miami this week.
AP-NY-01-16-00 1444EST
Copyright 2000 The Associated Press. |