Elian’s Relatives Agree to Speedy Appeal

Relatives of 6-year-old castaway Elian Gonzalez partially bowed to a Justice Department ultimatum Monday, agreeing to a speedy appeals process that could see the boy returned to his father in Cuba within a few weeks.

But on a day when family members here also took their case for keeping Elian to network television, the Justice Department angrily concluded that they had failed to meet a second demand: commit to surrendering the boy to U.S. authorities for deportation if they lose the appeal.

Without such a pledge, a Justice Department official said, federal authorities will summon Elian’s relatives to discuss his future today. His status in the U.S. could change as early as Thursday.

To reinforce its determination to obtain the pledge, the department sent a letter Monday night to the attorneys representing the relatives. It said, in part: “Without a specific written commitment . . . we have no choice but to move forward with the termination of Elian’s parole as of Thursday, March 30, 2000, at 9 a.m.”

The Miami relatives, who kept Elian out of school Monday, offered no immediate comment. But with the family’s permission, ABC News on Monday aired the first of three controversial reports showing journalist Diane Sawyer chatting and playing with the boy--an apparent attempt by the relatives to sway American public opinion.

Monday’s exchange between the Justice Department and the Gonzalez family in Miami centered on a U.S. District Court decision last week dismissing the Miami relatives’ lawsuit against Atty. Gen. Janet Reno. In effect, the ruling had paved the way for Elian’s return, which Reno endorses and polls show most Americans favor.

The legal moves Monday were the latest in a case that has vexed the Clinton administration, torn apart Elian’s family and starkly divided Cuban Americans and their brethren across the Florida Strait more than four decades after President Fidel Castro’s revolution drove hundreds of thousands of Cubans to the United States.

Elian was found clinging to an inner tube off the Florida coast Nov. 25 after his mother and 10 others died during an ill-fated voyage from Cuba. The U.S. government has backed the demand of Elian’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, that the boy be sent home to Cuba.

But Reno, who has pledged to “reunite Elian with his father in a fair, prompt and orderly manner,” has moved cautiously since the Immigration and Naturalization Service ruled in January that Elian’s father has the sole right to determine the boy’s future.

The possibility that he might be sent home triggered street demonstrations by Miami’s virulently anti-Castro Cuban-American community. Again on Monday, the community’s Democracy Movement vowed new public protests if Elian is ordered to return. And the well-heeled Cuban American National Foundation, a political lobbying group, called the Justice Department’s latest moves “abhorrent.”

Reno last week demanded that Elian’s great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez--who has had temporary custody of the boy--agree to a quick appeal of Judge K. Michael Moore’s ruling and then abide by the U.S. appellate court decision, or risk losing the boy as early as this week.

The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta is expected to hear the case within two weeks. Most legal analysts here said the court likely will uphold Moore’s decision endorsing Reno’s position in the case. They added, however, that the Justice Department could act unilaterally without additional rulings.

As about 100 supporters of Lazaro Gonzalez waved Cuban flags outside his Little Havana bungalow Monday, Elian appeared on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America.”

In the first of several interviews conducted last week by Sawyer, the boy chatted in Spanish with a child psychologist hired by ABC, did headstands with Sawyer and made a red-crayon drawing depicting his version of the rescue at sea.

Anticipating critics, who quickly charged that it was wrong to air interviews with the boy without his father’s permission, Sawyer told the audience that ABC News pondered long and hard before deciding that the news value was more important.

Castro, Cuba’s aging leader who has transformed Elian into a symbol of his revolution, also has escalated his offensive to win the boy’s return.

In a six-hour speech Sunday, Castro cautioned against optimism that Elian would be home any time soon. He described the boy’s Miami relatives as “desperate,” and he alleged they would kill Elian before handing him over.

“They are capable of killing the boy instead of returning him safe and sound to his country,” the Cuban president declared. “They are going to do something monstrous.”