Action intensifying to transfer Cuban boy to father
By Calvin Woodward, Associated Press, 04/10/00
WASHINGTON - Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder said today the federal government wants Elian Gonzalez's Miami relatives to take the 6-year-old Cuban to a neutral site to be handed over to his father.
A lawyer for the Miami relatives said they "will cooperate with the government." But the lawyer, Eduardo Rasco, would not promise that Elian would be taken from a great-uncle's house where he has been living -- a house that has become a rallying point for Cuban-Americans protesting U.S. efforts to reunite the boy with his father in Cuba.
"We want to make sure Elian is not harmed in any way psychologically by the transfer," Rasco said on CBS' "The Early Show." "We believe that the best way to do it is for (the father) Juan Miguel (Gonzalez) to come to the house."
Holder, interviewed on the same program, said he hopes that the transfer, which could come this week, can take place away from the house.
"We would hope we could be able to set up something so that Elian will not have to be carried through a throng of people in Miami that have been around that house," Holder said.
Federal officials scheduled a meeting in Miami today to speed the transfer of the child. But the boy's Florida relatives, citing illness in the family and resisting Washington's urgency, did not commit to attending.
Lazaro Gonzalez, Elian's great-uncle and temporary custodian, asked Attorney General Janet Reno that the meeting she sought between government-appointed psychiatric experts and the relatives "be scheduled on a tentative basis" because his daughter was in the hospital.
Reno refused Sunday to discuss the use of force as a last resort in reuniting the Cuban father and son except to say such plans have not been presented to her formally. "I hope with all my heart that the rule of law prevails, and I expect that it will," she said Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition."
The proposed session with two psychiatrists and a psychologist at a neutral site, a hospital, is meant to explore ways to have Elian handed over with the least disruption to him. The panel met for about an hour in Washington on Sunday with the boy's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez.
An immigration official, speaking on condition of anonymity Sunday evening, said that a letter would be sent to Lazaro Gonzalez saying the government would like the meetings to move forward today with whoever is available and suggesting that the psychiatric experts could visit separately with his daughter, Marisleysis, who has become a surrogate mother to Elian.
The official said the government believes it is important for her to be a part of the process and that the boy needs to feel the Miami relatives will support him during the transfer.
Hundreds of people wanting Elian to stay in the United States gathered outside the family's Miami home at times over the weekend, keeping up a peaceful vigil that officials fear will turn confrontational if agreement is not reached on transferring custody.
Justice officials, family lawyers and politicians from Washington and Havana filled Sunday talk shows, testament to the preoccupation of two nations with a boy rescued at sea four months ago but left adrift in a wrenching international and family struggle.
In Washington, Juan Miguel Gonzalez personally thanked the two Florida fishermen who pulled his son from the waters off Fort Lauderdale on Thanksgiving Day after his mother, fleeing Cuba, drowned.
Cousins Donato Dalrymple, who thinks the boy should stay in the United States, and Sam Ciancio, who thinks Elian should go back to his father, emerged from their visit believing a bond exists between father and son.
"I came here to satisfy my own heart," Ciancio said outside the office of Gonzalez's lawyer. "I am leaving here satisfied."
Dalrymple, who met Gonzalez separately, said: "I do believe that he loves him."
Reno voiced an increasing sense of urgency in settling Elian's fate.
"Each day that goes by only hurts him and I think we must get it resolved as soon as possible," she said on ABC's "This Week."
Attorneys for the Miami relatives said the family will not break the law but also does not want the boy torn away before his interests are thoroughly considered. Lawyer Spencer Eig said the relatives will "unlock the doors, they'll stand back" if officials come for Elian.
But that assurance did not take into account any actions protesters might take to block authorities from the home.
"We really don't have any control over that," said Jose Garcia-Pedrosa, another family lawyer.
The relatives are appealing a federal judge's ruling affirming the U.S. government's decision to send Elian back to his father.
In a letter released Sunday, Lazaro Gonzalez complained anew that the government-appointed experts coming to meet the family are on a preordained mission.
"I believe that the experts should meet with Elian and his American family before reaching their conclusions," he said. "I cannot understand why they would only meet with the adults and, even then, only after having reached their decision about a child they have never met."
Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who came from Havana last week, firmly declared upon his arrival that he wanted to return to Cuba with his son, and yet managed to spark debate about whether he was speaking freely or under duress from Fidel Castro's communist regime.
His U.S. lawyer, Gregory Craig, said Sunday the statement Gonzalez read upon his arrival was in fact written with the help of the Cuban government. But Craig insisted Gonzalez believed everything he said.
"At the end of the day, Juan Miguel owns his own words," he said on NBC.
