Relatives Won’t Budge on Elian Surrender

With a government deadline fast approaching, Elian Gonzalez’s Miami relatives Tuesday continued to resist demands that they promise in writing to surrender the boy if they lose their court fight to keep him in the country.

Lawyers for the family and the U.S. government met in the morning without resolving the impasse, despite threats from immigration authorities to remove the 6-year-old Cuban.

“They said, ‘If you don’t sign the paper, we remove Elian.’ They don’t tell us how,” family spokesman Armando Gutierrez said.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service warned Monday that Elian’s temporary permission to stay in the United States would be revoked at 9 a.m. Thursday unless the relatives provide the written guarantee.

Gutierrez said the “blanket statement” that the INS is demanding is “not the American way.”

Gutierrez charged that INS officials “are following orders either from Clinton’s lawyers or Fidel [Castro], and they need to answer to the community and to the world.”

The INS asked Elian’s great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez to meet with them today, when, government officials said, he would be given another opportunity to sign a pledge to give up Elian if he loses the court battle.

If Lazaro Gonzalez will not agree in writing to obey the court ruling, the INS intends to advise him Thursday how and when he is to relinquish custody of Elian, according to the government officials, who requested anonymity.

Elian, who is living with his great-uncle, is being kept home from school this week. The family spokesman said Elian won’t return to school out of fears that Cuba might somehow try to force him back to the island.

Jorge Mas Santos, chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation, a Cuban exile group, said he believes the government will think carefully before acting.

Government officials have said they do not want to traumatize the boy or create a family conflict.

“From the beginning we have been mindful of the fact that at the center of this case is a 6-year-old boy who has been through a terrible ordeal,” INS spokeswoman Karen Kraushaar said.

About 75 demonstrators gathered outside the Gonzalez home Tuesday in response to a call by the anti-Castro Democracy Movement, which urged them to form a human chain around the home if the government tries to remove Elian.

The U.S. relatives have asked a federal appeals court in Atlanta to overturn a federal judge’s ruling affirming the INS decision to return Elian to his father in Cuba. The court scheduled arguments for the week of May 8, which could complicate any steps by the government in the meantime.

The child’s Miami relatives last week allowed ABC-TV’s Diane Sawyer to spend two days with Elian. The result was his first extended interview, broadcast this week on “Good Morning America.”

In Tuesday’s segment, ABC said the boy indicated he doesn’t want to return to Cuba. But the network said it decided not to air the remark because of the “inflamed climate” surrounding the case.

Elian has been the subject of an international custody dispute since November, when he was found floating on an inner tube off the Florida coast. His mother, who was divorced from Elian’s father, died along with 10 others when their boat sank en route from Cuba.