Father Seeks to Be Elian’s Sole Legal Voice

Juan Miguel Gonzalez on Wednesday asked a federal appeals court to let him alone speak for his 6-year-old son, Elian, in the child’s petition for asylum in the United States.

If the court grants Gonzalez’s emergency motion, Lazaro Gonzalez--Elian’s great-uncle and his father’s uncle--would be removed from the petition. And it would clear the way for Juan Miguel Gonzalez to withdraw the legal move intended to keep Elian in this country.

The request marks the first time that the father has gotten involved in the legal proceedings swirling around his son, who has been the focus of a highly political and emotional custody struggle since he was rescued from the sea off Florida on Thanksgiving Day. The boat carrying him from Cuba had sunk and his mother and 10 others drowned in their attempt to reach the U.S.

“This father beseeches this court with all the emotion and fervor of a parent protecting his son to let him raise his child in peace,” the motion said.

Lazaro Gonzalez and his family, who took Elian into their Miami home after he was rescued by fishermen, maintain that the young boy should not be forced to grow up in communist Cuba. On May 11, the appellate court is scheduled to consider their appeal of a Miami U.S. District Court ruling dismissing their bid to win a political asylum hearing for the boy.

But in the motion to the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, lawyers for Juan Miguel Gonzalez argue that any right the boy’s Miami relatives had to speak on his behalf is void now that Elian is living with his father on U.S. territory.

A day earlier, the Miami relatives had asked the appeals court to appoint a guardian for Elian and to give them, their lawyers and psychiatrists unfettered access to the boy, who was taken from their Miami home Saturday by armed federal agents and reunited with his father, stepmother and infant half-brother at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington.

On Tuesday, Juan Miguel Gonzalez and his family were moved to a guest house on the Aspen Institute’s vast Wye River estate about 70 miles east of the capital. The remote, 1,000-plus-acre property has been the site of seminars, Middle East peace talks and retreats.

Visits from the boy’s Miami relatives would be “psychologically harmful” to Elian, attorney Gregory B. Craig wrote in the brief.

“Whatever the motives of Lazaro Gonzalez and his kin may be, it is sadly obvious that Elian indeed has been made the unwilling pawn on the chessboards of United States-Cuba relations, politics and innumerable other agendas,” the motion said. “This father, however, asks only for his young child--for the chance to provide Elian all the love and devotion he deserves.”

A child psychiatrist for the government who met with Elian and his family Tuesday recommended postponing any visit by the Miami relatives until they reconcile with the boy’s father.

Dr. Paulina F. Kernberg of Cornell University Medical College met with Elian and his family for 2 1/2 hours Tuesday. Her report, released by the Justice Department Wednesday, describes the boy as “exhausted” from the “stressful nature of the last several months” but recovering under his father’s care.

“Elian and his father appear to have a rich, varied relationship,” Kernberg says in the report.

Kernberg said that Elian romped happily with his father and half-brother and played “without anxiety” with toy soldiers she had brought to assess his reaction to the Saturday raid, in which federal agents similarly outfitted seized him from the Miami home.

“Judging by Elian’s positive reunion with his father, his apparent sense of well-being and happiness with his father and his capacity for play with the toy soldiers, I conclude that his removal from his Miami relatives’ home, although clearly startling and frightening, was in all likelihood not a traumatic experience producing lasting effects,” Kernberg wrote.

Kernberg said that a visit from the Miami relatives “would not be advisable in their current angry state.” She recommended instead that they keep in touch with the boy via letters, photographs and cassette tapes with recorded messages.

Elian and his half-brother each have their own rooms in the guest house, where they are staying as guests of Nina Houghton, chairwoman of the Wye Institute, according to Immigration and Naturalization Service spokeswoman Maria Cardona. The property is guarded 24 hours a day by U.S. marshals at federal government expense, Cardona said. The Cuban government is paying for food, clothing and supplies for the family, according to sources close to the arrangements.

Elian’s former kindergarten teacher and a 10-year-old cousin arrived Wednesday afternoon at the Maryland retreat, sources close to the family said.

Cousin Yasmany Betancourt Valentin, 10, and teacher Agueda Cecilia Fleitas Miranda are in the country to help with the boy’s “rehabilitation” in the United States, government sources said.

Four schoolmates of Elian’s from Cuba, each accompanied by an adult, are expected to arrive today. On Capitol Hill, where critics of the administration for days have been inching toward an investigation of Saturday’s raid, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) announced that the Senate Judiciary Committee would conduct a hearing next Wednesday.

It remained unclear whom Hatch would call to testify in the hearing. It seemed likely that some Justice Department officials would appear, perhaps joined by some lawyers on both sides of the controversy and others who have tried to mediate.

Meanwhile, several of Elian’s Miami relatives and a group of sympathetic Cuban American doctors appeared at a news conference Wednesday to plead for the government to allow Elian to see his cousin Marisleysis. Arguing that the boy had formed a bond with her as a “surrogate mother,” Dr. Jose Carro, president of a group called the Cuban Pediatric Society in Exile Inc., said that it would be “cruel” to “further traumatize” Elian by keeping him isolated from his Miami relatives.