Reno Says She Has No Regrets About Elian Affair

Former Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, speaking on the first anniversary of Elian Gonzalez’s return to Cuba, said Thursday that she has no regrets over authorizing the seizure of the Cuban boy.

“What we concluded was that the little boy belonged to his father,” Reno said to applause at a business luncheon here.

Reno, pondering a bid for Florida governor, outlined what could become the foundation of her candidacy: funding for early childhood education, improved access to health care and environmental protection.

As about 15 people chanted the Spanish word for killer outside the convention center, Reno, once district attorney for Miami-Dade County, said she felt “triumphant” that the protesters had the right to voice their opinion.

Many in South Florida’s sizable Cuban American community opposed Reno’s decisions in the case of Elian, who returned with his father to Cuba after a 7-month international custody battle waged by relatives in Miami.

Elian was 5 when he was rescued off the coast of Florida on Thanksgiving Day 1999 after his mother and 10 others died when their boat capsized on an illegal journey from Cuba to the United States.

Reno was asked in a question-and-answer period with the audience of 500 if she would have made the decision to send the boy back had the child’s mother died crossing the Berlin Wall.

Reno said her decision was based on the reputation of Elian’s father as a good parent and her conclusion that Elian would not be in danger. She added: “I would not have returned him to Nazi Germany.”

Reno said she has not decided yet whether to run for governor in 2002, but offered themes that contrast with Republican Gov. Jeb Bush.

Reno said the state’s education and judicial systems exhibited “a failure to invest in people” and its water supply and environment were fragile.

In a related development Thursday, the former diplomat who played host to Elian, his father and some of Elian’s friends in Washington before they returned to Cuba used the anniversary to urge an end to the U.S. embargo against the island nation.

Sally Grooms Cowal said the affair made her revisit her attitude toward U.S. policy on Cuba.

“For many Americans, including myself, the Elian Gonzalez saga caused us to look at Cuba anew,” Cowal told a news conference in Miami to promote her 2-month-old lobbying group, the Cuba Policy Foundation.

She was joined at the conference by a group of Cuban Americans who support her stance against the U.S. embargo.