Yahoo! May 2, 2000
US-Cuba in World Cup?
By Ronald Blum, Ap Sports Writer.
NEW YORK, 1 (AP) - Bruce Arena knows the U.S. men's soccer team needs any attention it can get. That's why he hopes Cuba advances to the Americans' group in World Cup qualifying.
The U.S. coach said Monday that game would be a lot easier to sell than one against Barbados.
The American's were put in the same group as Costa Rica in last Friday's draw for the semifinal round of qualifying in the North and Central American and Caribbean region.
The winner of this month's home-and-home series between Barbados and Cuba will be the third team in the group. The fourth will be the winner of a playoff that probably will involve Guatemala and either Antigua or St. Vincent.
With the Elian Gonzalez controversy, a U.S.-Cuba matchup would be surrounded by political talk.
``They should play it in Miami,'' U.S. midfielder John O'Brien said. ``That could make it very interesting.''
Don't expect that to happen. Washington; Foxboro, Mass.; and Columbus, Ohio, are the leading contenders for the home games in the semifinals, according to a U.S. Soccer Federation official who spoke on the condition he not be identified.
In the past, the U.S. team has been booed in home games by expatriates rooting for their former nation's team. The Americans feel like the visitors when they play Mexico in Southern California, and U.S. fans were outnumbered earlier this year during a game against Iran in Pasadena, Calif.
While nothing has been determined, it's clear a U.S.-Cuba game would be held far from a Cuban-American community.
``We will not play in South Florida,'' said Tom King, the USSF's chief operating officer. ``With Cuba, the game will be about one thing and one thing only: the three points to get to the World Cup. If the climate were better, having a friendly (exhibition) game with Cuba in South Florida would
be marvelous, but this is not the time.''
Arena, speaking during a news conference Monday to unveil new uniforms for the national team, said next month's U.S. Cup tournament is likely to be the final preparation before the start of World Cup qualifying in July.
The Americans' first game probably will be at Guatemala between July 12-16, followed by a game at Costa Rica from July 22-26. The Americans will be home Aug. 15, against the Barbados-Cuba winner, then play at home again on Sept. 2 or 3, probably against Guatemala.
After a home game against Costa Rica, to be played between Oct. 7-11, the Americans conclude the semifinals at Barbados or Cuba on Nov. 14 or 15.
The top two teams in the group advance to the regional finals, and the top three nations in the six-team finals qualify for the 2002 World Cup.
``I think it's become a very difficult region,'' Arena said. ``We're going to be fully extended in trying to qualify for the next round.''
The Americans finished last in the 32-nation field at the 1998 World Cup, and Arena was hired later that year after Steve Sampson quit. He's been testing young players in recent games, but looks forward to having a veteran lineup for the U.S. Cup, which includes games against South Africa (June
3 at Washington), Ireland (June 6 at Foxboro) and Mexico (June 11 at East Rutherford, N.J.).
``It's going to give me, for the first time since I've been on the job, the opportunity to look at our full team.'' Arena said. Notes: Unlike four years ago, U.S. qualifiers on the road are likely to be televised in the United States. While governing bodies were able to ask ABC/ESPN for large
amounts of money in the past, this year, there is a reciprocity agreement among the governing bodies in the region. ... Mexico also agreed to play in the U.S. Cup in 2001 and 2002. ... Everton forward Joe-Max Moore's injured knee ligament has been responding slowly to treatment, and it's not clear
if he'll be available for Arena's U.S. Cup roster. ... The new uniforms eliminate the line across the jersey and are constructed of fabric 15 percent lighter than the old ones.
Castro Leads May Day March for Elian
By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer.
HAVANA, 1 (AP) - Fidel Castro took an active role in May Day festivities for the first time in years Monday, marching in the parade and ending a speech with a cell phone call to Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who is fighting to bring his son, Elian, home to Cuba.
Castro traded his black boots for white tennis shoes, grasped a red, white and blue Cuban flag and led hundreds of thousands of people through the streets of Havana.
With a white T-shirt peeking out from his traditional olive green uniform, the 73-year-old leader who has ruled this island for 41 years guided a sea of chanting, flag-waving men, women and children from Havana's sprawling Plaza of the Revolution to the U.S. Interests Section almost two miles
away.
The scene was reminiscent of Castro in his early years in power, after the revolution that triumphed on New Year's Day 1959. ``Fidel! Fidel!'' chanted the crowd, obviously delighted by his athletic footwear and his participation in the annual march that traditionally involves workers.
Despite his years, the graying leader walked briskly down the broad boulevards to the U.S. Interests Section along Havana's Malecon coastal highway. With his hair mussed and sweaty from the walk under the blazing tropical sun, Castro chatted with Elian's grandmothers and others gathered outside
the American mission.
Earlier, Castro gave a speech before a festive crowd of hundreds of thousands. He praised the Cuban people for their tenacity during the five-month fight to bring 6-year-old Elian home.
Although May Day marches in Cuba regularly draw hundreds of thousands of people, this one appeared to be the largest in years. The turnout reflected the importance the communist government has placed on its battle to bring Elian back.
No crowd estimate was immediately available from the government, but Cuban state media estimated that millions of people had turned out for May Day celebrations across the island.
During his speech, Castro linked Elian's case to Cuba's struggle against the U.S. trade embargo and international criticism of the island's human rights record. He accused a ``Cuban-American terrorist mob'' of fighting to keep the shipwreck survivor in the United States.
``It was obvious that they underestimated our people, who have not rested a single day in fighting for something absolutely just,'' Castro said, referring to the campaign for Elian's return.
``Not even Dante could have described the hell he (Elian) has been through,'' Castro said. ``I wonder what the U.S. government would have done if a similar situation had been created with a barely 6-year-old American child kidnapped in Cuba and subjected to the appalling treatment the child has
received in that country.''
Castro said he was not convinced that an appeals court in Atlanta, which has set a May 11 hearing in the case, will rule in favor of Elian's father. Father and son are staying in the United States pending the hearing on a request by their Miami relatives for a political asylum hearing for the
boy.
After the speech, Castro spoke by cellular telephone with Juan Gonzalez as the crowd looked on.
``It is Juan Miguel,'' Castro said after Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque handed him the phone. ``On behalf of the children, of all the companions there, he sends a special greeting for our all of our people.''
The enormous crowd roared approval. Many in the crowd wore pictures of a smiling Elian with his father pinned to their shirts.
It was Castro's first speech at a May Day celebration in years. During recent May 1 gatherings, Castro has presided over massive marches of workers but has left the podium to labor leaders and other top officials.
The gathering this year was also unusual in that it was being described as an ``open tribune'' - the government term used to describe the mass concentrations regularly held to press for Elian's return to Cuba.
Elian's case has absorbed Cubans and their government since Nov. 25, when the boy was found floating on an inner tube off the Florida coast following a boating accident that killed his mother and 10 others.
The castaway quickly found himself at the center of an international custody battle. His anti-communist Miami relatives are fighting to keep him in the United States, while his father is demanding to take the boy back to Cuba.
Elian was reunited with his father in Washington last week after a dramatic raid of the Miami relatives' home. Armed agents whisked the boy away and flew him to his dad. The raid has been bitterly criticized by the Miami relatives and many of their supporters in South Florida's large
Cuban-American community, as well as by conservative members of Congress.
Elian's Father Asks Court to Let Him Take Boy Home
By James Vicini
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A lawyer for the father of shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez urged a U.S. appeals court on Monday to let the two return to Cuba by dismissing their Miami relatives' suit seeking a political asylum hearing for the boy.
``This father seeks to raise his family where he wants and how he wants. This right is no less important to people from Cuba than it is to Americans,'' Gregory Craig, the lawyer for Juan Miguel Gonzalez, said in a 17-page court filing.
Craig, who asked to take part in the arguments before the Atlanta-based appeals court on May 11, said prolonging the case against the father's wishes only damaged his 6-year-old son and his family.
``Juan Miguel has determined that Elian's best interests lie in being with his father, raised in a stable home environment in the town where his father, stepmother, little brother, grandparents and first cousins were born, grew up and now live,'' Craig said.
``Juan Miguel thinks that a 6-year-old boy found adrift in the Atlantic Ocean and now caught up in the American legal system craves the familiarity of his own bedroom in Cardenas,'' Craig said.
Elian, the boy at the center of the custody fight, remains at the secluded Wye River compound about 70 miles (110 km) east of Washington with his father, stepmother and baby half brother. He was reunited with his father after federal agents seized him from his Miami relatives on April 22.
Boy Was Rescued At Sea
Before the raid, Elian had been staying with the family of his great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez after being rescued at sea five months ago.
Craig said the political asylum proceeding sought by the Miami relatives could drag on for two years and might take even six years to resolve.
``Lazaro has used this nation's legal system in an attempt to destroy Juan Miguel's family. He now threatens to rob Elian of a childhood at his home with his father, his family and his friends. Nothing in law or humanity should compel such a result,'' Craig said.
He said the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service was correct in determining in January that Elian belonged with his father in Cuba. A federal judge in Miami agreed, but the relatives then won a hearing before the appeals court.
The appeals court has required that Elian remain in the United States until it decides whether he should be allowed to go back to Cuba or get an asylum hearing.
To require the INS to accept and process the asylum application that Lazaro Gonzalez filed on behalf of Elian would effectively force Juan Miguel Gonzalez ``to choose between his country and his son,'' Craig said.
Craig rejected claims by the Miami relatives that Elian knowingly filed his own asylum application, saying the boy ''does not read Spanish, much less English.''
Elian Dispute Riles Musicians On All Sides Of Issue
By Contributing Editor Richard B. Simon reports
Monday May 01 02:09 PM EDT
As many musicians see it, the geopolitical tug-of-war over 6-year-old Cuban castaway Elian Gonzalez has been handled poorly by all parties, including the media.
"The media brought a lot of unnecessary attention," 'N Sync singer JC Chasez said.
Third Eye Blind singer Stephan Jenkins wouldn't disagree. "The media is just as bad as the politicians, that they pander to sensationalism, the same way that politicians do," he said from a Canadian tour stop.
"Six kids got shot at a zoo ... [and] it took up a little tiny [newspaper column. The Elian story] took up three columns. ... The media's priorities are way out of whack. Everybody's a tabloid," Jenkins added, referring to a shooting last week at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.
Little could 6-year-old Elian have known, when fisherman rescued him off the Miami coast in November, that his story would affect the world media, global politics and even the music industry. The Elian saga has been front-page news around the country since the boy arrived in Florida, clinging
to an inner tube after the small boat he escaped in with his mother and 12 others capsized.
'The Whole Thing's Stupid'
A global custody battle has raged in the U.S. justice system and in the media for months, as the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Justice Department and lesser courts have tangled over whether the boy should remain in the United States with his great-uncle's Miami family —
themselves Cuban-Americans — or returned to Cuba to live with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez.
"The whole thing's stupid and he oughta go back to his dad and they shouldn't make a big deal out of it," said guitarist Billy Zoom of Los Angeles punk veterans X. "If his dad lived any other place in the world and his mother died, they'd give him back to his dad, wouldn't they?"
But veteran folk-rocker David Crosby has doubts that Cuba is the boy's best option.
"Seems to me if the dad had been anywhere near to the kid prior to all this, he would have been on the boat, too," Crosby wrote in an email. "In any case, ... Cuba right now is a very tough place to give a child food and medicines and books and clothes and a few other things that
kids need.
"Elian became a pawn in a political struggle," Crosby continued. "Cuba hates the idea that everyone wants to leave and will risk their lives to do so."
Strike Called
The boy was forcibly removed from his great-uncle's home by armed U.S. marshals early April 22 and brought to his father, who had flown to the U.S. The Justice Department has stood behind it actions.
In response to the raid, Cuban-Americans held a general strike Tuesday, closing down some services in Miami.
A Sony Latino-sponsored Latin-music showcase, scheduled to open the 11th annual Billboard Latin Music Conference Tuesday night, was canceled — partly because of the strike, which left the venue understaffed, and partly out of deference to Cuban-American pop singer Gloria Estefan, who was
scheduled to appear.
The vehemently anti-Castro Estefan was among the crowd that locked arms around the home of Elian's great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, to protest the U.S. government's intent to return the boy to his father.
Protesters held that to give Elian back to his father would mean delivering him to an oppressive government.
"The father is trying to bring his boy to a completely hopeless situation in Cuba," veteran Cuban-American jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval said. Sandoval, too, was on hand for the Miami vigil.
"The last thing you want for your child is to bring him somewhere that is a terrible place. That doesn't demonstrate to me any kind of love for your son, because we, as parents, sacrifice."
But presidential candidate and ex–Dead Kennedys singer Jello Biafra disagreed.
"Let the poor kid go home, for crying out loud," said Biafra, who is a Green Party candidate in this year's U.S. presidential race.
"As far as I can tell, nobody's ever asked the kid," Biafra said. "They batter him with psychologists, and have pundit clowns on TV evaluate snippets of video footage, but ... one thing that I totally object to in custody cases in this country is they rarely ever ask the kid,"
Biafra said.
"I strongly feel that this child needs to be with his primary biological father," said singer Gen Vincent of Florida death-metal fetish band the Genitorturers. "I don't agree with anyone running into anyone's house and beating down the door, but that's what they were forced to do."
Vincent said Elian should not have been caught in the decades-old tug-of-war between Cuba, the United States and disenfranchised Cubans in Miami.
'It's Totally Lame'
The Justice Department — and its head, Attorney General Janet Reno — have been criticized for using strong-arm tactics in the early-morning raid.
"I think the way they raided, the raid they did to get him back to his father, was beyond stupid, tactically," Biafra said.
"It's unnecessary to seize a child at gunpoint, for one," Chasez said. "Any child belongs with [his immediate] family, but it's about how you go about doing things, and that's what I don't agree with."
Reno has defended the action, saying that an intelligence report indicated there could have been weapons in the house, the Associated Press reported. "And there was clear defiance of the law.," she reportedly said.
Jenkins still blamed Reno and the media.
"You have agents in the house like that not only because the people who we have lined up to handle these kinds of situations are inept but also that the media allow this in order to chase a story," Jenkins said. "It's totally lame."
(Staff Writer Teri VanHorn, Contributing Editor Bob Margolis, Contributing Editor Tim Scanlin and World Music Editor Richard Gehr contributed to this report.)
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