By Mildrade Cherfils, .c The Associated Press
MIAMI, 29 (AP) - With four law firms and six lawyers representing Elian Gonzalez, additional time to prepare their case against sending the boy back to Cuba isn't necessary, a federal judge said as he reconsidered the timing of the court fight on the child's fate.
Elian's Miami relatives are suing the U.S. government to keep the 6-year-old Cuban boy in this country.
Originally, U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler said he would hear arguments March 6 on whether to dismiss the lawsuit. But Friday, he moved that day up to Feb. 22.
``No good deed goes unpunished,'' the judge said in expressing his dismay over reports that he had set the later date to allow time for Elian's supporters to press Congress to give the boy U.S. citizenship.
``I am concerned only with the legal matters,'' Hoeveler said. ``I have no interest in bills going through in one way or the other.''
The U.S. government on Thursday had asked for earlier hearing dates, arguing that failing to return Elian to his father in Cuba would undermine efforts to get other countries to return abducted American children.
The argument was one of several made by the government Thursday in a motion to dismiss a challenge to an Immigration and Naturalization Service order to send Elian back to his father in Cuba.
Government attorneys also argued that the federal courts have no right to intervene in the dispute over the boy, and that the boy's Miami relatives have no legal standing in the case.
Transcripts of interviews with Elian's father in Cuba and the boy's great-uncle in Miami were also included in the 400-page motion the U.S. government filed Thursday.
Also Friday, Spencer Eig, lead attorney for the Miami family, asked for the judge's guidance on what lawyers could say to the press. Eig said the issue was complicated by what he described as his varying roles, including lobbying and public advocacy.
Hoeveler cautioned lawyers against giving ``sidewalk opinions about who you think is right, who you think is wrong in this case.''
``It's important that statements made in this case be moderate, well chosen,'' he said. ``I am not interested in all of the hoopla, all of the demonstrations, all of the excesses that are taking place.''
Elian has been the center of an international tug of war since he was found clinging to an inner tube Nov. 25 off the Florida coast. His mother and others traveling with him from Cuba had drowned.
AP-NY-01-29-00 0438EST
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