By Pascal Fletcher
HAVANA, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Cuba said on Thursday that the U.S. government had ``tied its own hands'' in the custody battle over 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez and that President Bill Clinton should salvage his own honour and prestige by sending the boy home to his father.
In a front-page editorial, Cuba's Communist Party daily Granma addressed the U.S. president, saying he risked carrying all the blame for the bitter, drawn-out dispute over the Cuban shipwreck boy, which has inflamed passions in Havana and Miami.
``Return the child to his father and his country. This is the only honourable solution still possible which would give prestige to him (Clinton), his nation and his people,'' it said.
Granma, which faithfully reflects the Cuban leadership's views, criticised Clinton's administration for not promptly implementing an Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) ruling to send 6-year-old Elian back to his father in Cuba.
``The U.S. government tied its own hands in the brutal case of Elian's kidnapping,'' the paper said.
It argued that by not acting quickly, the U.S. government had allowed time for legal and political manoeuvres by the boy's Miami relatives, and their Cuban exile and U.S. political backers, to keep him in the United States. This included an initiative in the U.S. Congress to grant him U.S.
citizenship.
Clinton has made clear he backs the original INS ruling and opposes the idea of Congress making Elian a U.S. citizen.
Granma predicted that despite the latest obstacles, Elian would return to Cuba. ``The United States will not be able to pay the huge political and moral price of such madness,'' it said.
The editorial appeared to reflect the view of President Fidel Castro's government that it had won the moral high-ground in the eight-week-old custody war, which has put a new strain on already historically sensitive ties between the United States and Cuba.
Since Elian was rescued off the Florida coast on Nov 25. after the shipwreck of a boat carrying illegal Cuban migrants, Castro has launched an extraordinary, nationalistic crusade to back a custody claim by the boy's father and grandparents in Cuba. Elian's mother was among 11 Cubans drowned in
the shipwreck.
Castro's campaign has involved well-organised mass marches attended by several million Cubans, carefully scripted rallies and debates dedicated to Elian and an unrelenting barrage of patriotic, and sometimes virulently anti-American, propaganda.
Granma singled out for criticism the lawsuit filed on Wednesday by Elian's Miami relatives which was aimed at forcing the U.S. government to hold a hearing on the INS ruling.
It noted that the case had been assigned to U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King, chief judge of the South Florida region.
In a 1997 lawsuit filed against the Cuban government, King awarded $187 million in compensation to the families of three Cuban-American pilots who died when their planes were shot down by a Cuban MiG fighter north of Havana in February 1996.
``What a coincidence!'' Granma commented sarcastically on the choice of Judge King for the Elian case.
It also recalled that King's 1997 ruling had resulted in the freezing of telephone payments owed to Cuba by several U.S. phone companies, causing Havana to retaliate in turn by cutting most of its direct phone circuits with the United States.
Granma said the ``one positive element'' it saw in the continuing custody wrangle was the attitude of the U.S. public, which ``every day increasingly backs the return of Elian.''
16:51 01-20-00
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