International Dispute Continues Over Fate of 6-Year-Old Refugee in U.S.

Lawyers for the 6-year-old Cuban boy at the center of an international custody dispute filed a petition Friday for political asylum in the United States, which could extend his stay with his Miami relatives for at least 60 days.

The lawyers for Elian Gonzalez said they were worried that he might be sent out of the country if the application was not filed.

Roger Bernstein, one of the boy’s five lawyers, said the Immigration and Naturalization Service has 60 days to respond to the petition and give the boy a hearing. “We are very confident he will be given a full opportunity to explain why he fears returning to Cuba,” Bernstein said.

Elian was found clinging to an inner tube off the coast of Fort Lauderdale on Thanksgiving Day, having survived a boating accident that took the life of his mother during an apparent attempt to illegally enter the United States.

U.S. authorities placed him with his great-aunt and great-uncle in Miami, who said they could provide him with a better life in the United States. Elian’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, has demanded that his son be returned to Cuba and has refused to go to the United States or a neutral country to petition for his son.

INS spokeswoman Maria Elena Garcia could not discuss the specifics of Elian’s case because of privacy laws.

She said a person who is granted asylum is given permanent residency status after a year. If the person comes from a country that does not have relations with the United States, such as Cuba, he would not be deported if the asylum petition were denied.

In Cuba on Friday, mass demonstrations demanding the boy’s return spread throughout the island.

Tens of thousands of people crowded around the U.S. Interests Section in Havana for the fifth day in a row, waving red, white and blue Cuban flags and placards bearing Elian’s image. “Free Elian! Free Elian!” the demonstrators shouted.

Earlier in the day, state television showed hundreds of thousands of citizens gathering at provincial capitals throughout the island. The week’s protests are the largest pro-government demonstrations on the island--except for annual May Day celebrations--since 1980.

The custody dispute cast a shadow over U.S.-Cuban migration talks scheduled for Monday in Havana, but both U.S. and Cuban officials said the meeting is expected to continue as planned.

The dispute comes amid Cuba’s growing anger over what it says is the U.S. government’s failure to abide by 1994 and 1995 migration accords signed to stop a flood of people leaving the island on rickety rafts and inner tubes.

Under the agreements, U.S. officials are to send Cubans rescued at sea back to Cuba and allow those who make it here to stay. Cuban officials are to prevent people from leaving the communist island illegally.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona visited Versailles, a popular Cuban restaurant in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, on Friday and said that Elian should not be sent back. McCain also said the boy’s father should drop his refusal to go to the United States to petition for his son.

“I believe that this young man should be absolutely assured that he will be able to live in freedom and not in slavery,” he said.

Meanwhile, Sen. Bob Torricelli (D-N.J.), whose state has the nation’s second-largest Cuban American population, said at a separate news conference in Little Havana that the boy’s fate should be determined by U.S. laws in U.S. courts.

“We are going to demonstrate the difference between a dictatorship, which bullies on the streets, and a constitutional democracy that follows laws and procedures,” Torricelli said.