December 15, 1999
Web posted at: 11:00 p.m. EST (0400 GMT)

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From staff and wire reports

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. immigration officials, after interviewing the father of Elian Gonzalez in Cuba, have begun a high-level review of the case of the 6-year-old boy at the center of an international dispute.

The review is headed by Immigration and Naturalization Service General Counsel Owen Cooper, who is expected to make a recommendation to INS Commissioner Doris Meissner on whether the child should be returned to his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, in Cuba.

The interview was conducted by INS agents in Havana. Elian is now in Miami with relatives.

VIDEO CNN's Lucia Newman reports on the immigration talks between the U.S. and Cuba scheduled to take place in Havana on Monday. Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K CNN's Lucia Newman looks at the ongoing custody battle QuickTime Play Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K     MESSAGE BOARD US/Cuba relations

Elian was rescued from the Atlantic Ocean on Thanksgiving Day. Elian, his mother and 12 others had left Cuba for the United States aboard a boat that sank off the Florida coast, after returning one passenger to Cuba. His mother was one of 10 people aboard the boat who died.

A Miami cousin fighting for custody of Elian wrote a letter to Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday, urging her to use her clout as first lady to help.

"We beg you now as a mother, to be the first lady that truly crosses all ethnic barriers and speaks out for the children," Marisleysis Gonzalez wrote. "Please, please help."

Elian's father, who was divorced from Elian's mother, wants him sent home to Cuba. Marisleysis Gonzalez and other relatives in Miami say Elian should stay in the United States rather than grow up under communism.

Although the INS is an arm of the Justice Department, officials say the final decision is expected to be made by Meissner, not Attorney General Janet Reno.

There is no timetable for the review, said INS spokesman Russ Bergeron on Wednesday. He said he would not speculate about when a final decision would be reached.

U.S. authorities acknowledge a government decision to repatriate the boy to Cuba would likely trigger court action by the youth's relatives in Florida challenging the decision. Government lawyers say litigation in both federal and state courts in similar cases has sometimes delayed resolution of such cases for several years.

Elian's case has raised hackles on both sides of the bitter ideological divide between Cuba and exile enemies of Cuban President Fidel Castro. Havana has demanded that Elian be sent back and has mobilized thousands of Cubans in demonstrations calling for his return.

President Clinton has said he does not want politics to interfere with the custody decision.

Marisleysis Gonzalez said in her letter to the first lady, "We asked your husband to step in and consider Elian's fate" but that they were still waiting.

She questioned whether political pressure from Castro had kept the United States from "giving Elian the proper human rights."

In the letter, Marisleysis Gonzalez also wrote, "I ask you as a mother to remember Elian's mother's will, that she wanted him to grow up in the United States and enjoy the possibilities that America affords us all ... Don't let his mother's will be gone in the Atlantic waters. Let him stay in a free country."

Copies of the letter were distributed to the media on Wednesday as Elian's Miami relatives took him to visit a private elementary school where they hope to enroll him.

Cuban exiles gathered at the Ermita de la Caridad church in Coconut Grove, Florida, for a Mass to celebrate Elian's rescue and to pray for divine help in keeping him in Miami.

But Max Castro, a Cuba expert at the University of Miami, used his weekly column in the Miami Herald newspaper to urge the U.S. government to resist pressure from the exiles to keep the boy in Miami.

"Once again, hard-line exiles are using all their clout to drive the U.S. government to adopt a course of action that would fly in the face of law and logic, not to mention larger U.S. interests," Castro wrote.

"It is especially ironic that the very people who have clamored loudest for maintaining the embargo on the sale of food to Cuba, which has a negative impact on the welfare of most children there, now are at the forefront of ensuring the future of this one poster child," Castro wrote.

A U.S. economic embargo in place against Cuba for 40 years is meant to foster democracy and respect for human rights, Washington says.

Producer Terry Frieden and Reuters contributed to this report.

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