Government Warns U.S. to Return Boy

The Cuban government warned that failure to return a 5-year-old Cuban boy to his father on the Caribbean island could further harm Havana’s already delicate relationship with the United States. If Elian Gonzalez is not returned, “the United States will be responsible [for] how the relationship between the two countries develops,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Alejandro Gonzalez said. The child’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, 31, has asked the Cuban Foreign Ministry to help him get back the boy, who survived a boating accident last week in which his mother drowned. The boy’s father says that his ex-wife took their son out of the country without his permission and that he considers the child to have been kidnapped.