Elian’s Father Arrives, Says He Feared for Son

The father of 6-year-old Cuban castaway Elian Gonzalez will sit down today with federal law enforcement officials to begin pressing his case for the return of his son, one day after he defiantly came to America and angrily rebuked the United States for making him “fear for the safety of his son.”

The meeting with Department of Justice and Immigration and Naturalization Service officials, including Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, is designed to help encourage Elian’s Miami relatives to turn the boy over to his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. Many fear that such a transfer--if forced--could spark violence in Miami’s Little Havana community, where hundreds of anti-Castro protesters have pledged to fight any U.S. attempt to take Elian away from his relatives there.

The drama surrounding the international custody controversy stretched from Washington to Miami Thursday and began early in the day when the father landed at Dulles International Airport.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., stressing that Gonzalez’s journey to U.S. soil at last foreshadows a solution to the four-month-long international saga, made it clear that Washington is determined to see a father-son reunion, either in the United States or eventually in a return to communist Cuba.

“Father and son,” Holder said, “need to be together.”

Gonzalez, upon his dawn arrival Thursday, also lashed out at his relatives in Miami, with whom his son has been staying, declaring that he is the boy’s father and that the Miami family members are merely “distant relatives who had never seen him before.”

With Gonzalez here and Elian and the Miami relatives huddled in Florida, the tug of war for the child tightened dramatically.

In Miami, a fifth day of talks Thursday between immigration officials and lawyers for Elian’s Miami relatives broke down without an agreement over how Elian would be transferred to his father’s custody. Each side accused the other of intransigence.

“Unfortunately, the extended discussions did not produce the simple and reasonable assurances from the relatives that they would voluntarily produce Elian,” said Robert Wallis, district director of the INS in Miami. “Instead, the attorneys continue to revisit the issue of whether Elian should be reunited with his father as opposed to discussing how best to reunite the two.”

Wallis said that the family would soon be sent a letter detailing how the boy is to be transferred to his father’s custody.

Lawyers for the family charged that the government would not promise that Elian, once turned over to his father, would not be whisked out of the country before a federal appeals court next month hears arguments on granting Elian an asylum hearing.

“It is time for the government and the lawyers to walk away and for the family to get together to discuss what is in Elian’s best interests,” said Linda Osberg-Braun, a lawyer who represents the Miami relatives.

But on a personal level, the television scenes of the father walking down an airplane stairway in suburban Washington only served to inflame many already-angry members of the Cuban American community of Miami’s Little Havana who want Elian to remain in America.

“From here begins the battle,” proclaimed one of dozens of protesters outside a police barricade in front of the home of Elian’s Miami relatives.

In the yard, the youngster spent the morning playing on a slide and firing toy guns--apparently oblivious to the escalating international tensions that followed his rescue at sea on Thanksgiving Day.

Appearing tired from the red-eye charter flight and seemingly a bit confused, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, 31, was escorted by police motorcade from the airport in suburban Virginia to the Bethesda, Md., home of the head of the Cuban diplomatic mission. There, he and his lawyers began preparing for the next step in the widening diplomatic standoff.

Gonzalez, dressed in a dark blue suit and carrying his infant son, Hianny, expressed no desire to defect to the United States.

Indeed, many observers speculated that, because the international incident has vaulted him to an exalted status in Cuba, he might be able to live better there now than in the United States.

Accompanied by his wife, Nersy, Gonzalez read a lengthy statement in Spanish denying accusations from his Miami relatives that he has been an unfit father.

In fact, since divorcing Elian’s mother, who drowned along with 10 others as they sailed from Cuba to Florida, Gonzalez had been heavily involved in raising his son, sharing parental duties, according to an INS investigation. The boy had bedrooms in both parents’ houses.

“This is Elian’s true family,” he said, indicating his wife and their child, “and we love him very much.”

His goal, he said, is once again to embrace the boy.

“For 137 days, I have endured separation from my son,” he said. “Never before the anguishing days since Nov. 22 did he have more need for a father and family, his friends and his school.”

He described his own legal efforts to win back the boy and said that he once believed he had won custody of his son after a legal ruling, only to find out it “has not been [enforced] but rather subjected to endless confusing legal procedures.”

But he was most angry over his son’s treatment in America.

“As if his mother’s disappearance before his eyes and the miracle of his arrival have not inflicted enough damage on [the] boy,” he said, “he has had to spend time under the temporary custody of some distant relatives who had never seen him before.”

Elian has been “paraded and exhibited in public rallies and by the media with a clear intent to obtain political advantage from this tragedy.

“Politicians, journalists, lawyers, agents and others unrelated to the family have been harassing my son.”

Referring to an ABC-TV news interview with the boy, he said that it was done “without my consent” and demonstrated “their cruelty to him and the damage caused.”

“In the last few days my family and I have been alarmed to see the passion in Miami and danger displayed on television that make us fear for the safety of my son,” he said. “I am truly impatient to have him returned to me as soon as possible and go back to Cuba together immediately.”

It was unclear what influence, if any, Castro or his government had on Gonzalez’s comments, although the Cuban dictator did see the family off at the airport.

Some of the Miami family entourage suggested that Castro played a major role in Gonzalez’s remarks. “Those might have been his lips moving, but they were Fidel Castro’s words,” charged family lawyer Roger Bernstein.

In a speech to hundreds of university students Wednesday night in Cuba, Castro said that “I am talking about three days” for the time it will take for the father-son reunion.

But Gonzalez said here that “I have been told I should still wait for two other months” before the boy’s return to their home in Cardenas, Cuba.

The INS will continue to pressure the Miami group to turn over temporary custody of Elian. If that happens, Gonzalez could stay here or return to Cuba with his son, if he agrees to return the boy should his relatives in Miami win permanent custody in federal court.

The legal timetable could stretch well into May. And, if at any point the Miami family does not comply with legal orders, the federal government might feel compelled to enter the Little Havana home and forcibly remove the boy.

Some policy analysts in Washington expect the case to be resolved relatively quickly, pointing out that the Clinton administration clearly wants to end a dispute that can only cause it trouble.

The Cuban government sought, and presumably received, a commitment to end the dispute quickly before it authorized Elian’s father to travel to the United States, observers said. Of course, the Miami relatives still have physical control of the boy, and they could refuse to relinquish him without a fight.

“The last card the Cuban American leadership and the Miami relatives have is whether it will be serene or ugly,” said Larry Burns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a Washington-based think tank. “This may be the only leverage they have.”

Burns expects the Miami family to give in eventually, although they are the only actors in this drama with any incentive to drag things out.

Ana Julia Jatar, head of the Cuban project at Inter-American Dialogue, another Washington think tank, said that the father would not have come to Washington without assurances that he would be able to take Elian home with him.

Some Cuban Americans in Miami have suggested that Gonzalez might defect himself. But as a doorman in a Cuban tourist hotel, he already is near the top of Cuba’s strangely skewed economy. Hotel workers collect tips in dollars, German marks and other hard currency, providing an income beyond the dreams of most Cubans. And if he brings Elian home, he can expect additional rewards from the government.

“The father’s future is guaranteed,” Burns said. “He is a folk hero because he is Elian’s father. His chance of defecting is zero. He is big now. People come here to better their lives. He has bettered his life already, just by being the father.”

In other developments, Lazaro Gonzalez, Elian’s great-uncle, told a Spanish-language radio station that Elian watched his father’s arrival on television, but there was no word on what the boy’s reaction was.

Unlike in Miami, only a smattering of protesters showed up at Dulles for Gonzalez’s arrival. “Welcome to freedom!” they shouted.

At the Bethesda home, as many as 200 police officers sealed off residential streets, and several dozen people gathered for a demonstration and candlelight vigil Thursday.

Official Washington also reacted quickly to the news that Gonzalez was in town. Holder said that the father’s arrival will speed the process and that the Justice Department will continue negotiations with the Miami relatives to end the impasse without sending in federal law enforcement officials.

A Justice Department official who asked not to be identified said that, while Gonzalez has indicated his reluctance to go to Miami, that possibility “is not completely off the table.”

Serrano reported from Washington and Clary from Miami. Times staff writers Nick Anderson, Christine Frey, Norman Kempster and Eric Lichtblau contributed to this story.