Elian's relatives in Little Havana moving from home

MIAMI -- The Miami relatives of Elian Gonzalez are moving out of the Little Havana bungalow made famous by the media hordes and protesters who camped out in front of it during the five months the 6-year-old Cuban boy lived there.

Saying they feel uncomfortable in the rented home since the April 22 federal raid removed Elian from their care, the family is expected to move to a home in West Miami.

Elian and his Cuban family are also on the move. Since the raid, they had been living in a secluded Maryland retreat. Last night, the family moved to a historic house in Washington near the home of Vice President Al Gore. The new house is the headquarters of Youth for Understanding, International Exchange, which promotes exchanges involving high school students.

The family is awaiting a decision from the 11th Circuit US Court of Appeals on the Miami relatives' request for asylum for the boy.

Those relatives have lived in the modest 1952 two-bedroom, one-bathroom home in Little Havana for more than a decade. But Elian's swing set has already been moved to the back yard of his relatives' new home in West Miami. Posts have been dug for a fence because the family says it wants privacy.

"People I don't know wave to me if I'm standing outside" the Little Havana home, said Lazaro Gonzalez, Elian's great uncle.

The West Miami residence, a 1948 two-bedroom, two-bathroom home that previously was in foreclosure, was bought at an auction in February for $112,500 by a real estate investor and friend of the Gonzalez family.

The friend reportedly plans to sell the renovated home to Delfin Gonzalez, Lazaro's brother, who will in turn lease it, with an option to buy, to Lazaro, his wife, Angela, and daughter, Marisleysis.

Also yesterday, US Attorney General Janet Reno traveled to Florida to speak at a dinner honoring the state's first 150 female lawyers.

Reno said she had no plans to meet with members of Miami's exiled Cuban community during the trip. She said she would prefer to wait until tensions over the Gonzalez case subside before meeting with the community.

More than 600 people gathered in the streets and on boats outside the beachfront hotel where Reno was speaking. Police, using barricades, kept Reno's supporters from those protesting her decision to forcibly remove Elian from the Miami family.