Juan Miguel Gonzalez turns down offer of Capitol Hill meeting

April 12, 2000
Web posted at: 3:25 p.m. EDT (1925 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Juan Miguel Gonzalez did not go to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to meet with Republican leaders who had invited him there to discuss his "options," said House Majority Whip Tom Delay (R-Texas), who intimated that Gonzalez did not attend because he wasn't allowed to.

Rep. Tom Delay

Delay said the fact that Gonzalez didn't make the trip was proof that the father of six-year-old Elian Gonzalez was under the control of Cuban leader Fidel Castro's "communist thugs."

Elian is at the center of a custody and immigration battle between his father and his great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez, who has cared for him since he was rescued off the Florida coast on November 25, one of three survivors of a shipwreck that left his mother, stepfather and nine others dead as they attempted to flee Cuba.

"Mr. Gonzalez, I know, faces an incredibly difficult situation," Delay said of the boy's father. "But make no mistake, it is Fidel Castro who is responsible for this entire situation, and President (Bill) Clinton and Janet Reno have now joined Fidel Castro's effort to drag a small boy back to a life of communist oppression."

Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Florida) said at a news conference on Wednesday that U.S. security officials who are protecting Gonzalez informed Capitol Hill police that he would not attend the meeting, which had been scheduled for 11 a.m. Eastern Time. The members of Congress received no direct word from Gonzalez, Diaz-Balart said.

Gonzalez did not attend the meeting "because it was organized by those Republican members of Congress who made it clear they think Elian should stay in the United States and Juan Miguel should stay here with him," a Cuban source told CNN. "He saw no point in meeting with people who'd already made their minds up on this matter."

Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart

The source went on to say that Juan Miguel Gonzalez did not think this would be a "productive meeting" or "a good use of his time."

House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) said Tuesday that he planned to invite Juan Miguel Gonzalez to a meeting to discuss the Cuban father's "opportunities in America."

Armey said he was struck by the "extraordinary control" exhibited by Gonzalez since he arrived in the United States last week. The Texas Republican said the boy's father "hasn't had one moment to see what life here might be like for himself and his wife here in America."

In a briefing for reporters, Armey said the boy's father should be able to take a "free, unsupervised, unfettered" drive in the suburbs or visit a supermarket.

Rep. Dick Armey

Armey's press secretary, Michelle Davis, said Tuesday that his staff was looking into how to arrange the logistics of such a meeting, including determining how to get a letter of invitation to Gonzalez.

Asked what message Armey would take from a decision by Gonzalez not to accept the invitation, Davis said: "Everyone will wonder if it was a free choice or not."

The elder Gonzalez' no-show at the Wednesday meeting was a minor circumstance in a day of rapid-fire developments in the Elian case.

While the Justice Department prepared to issue final instructions Wednesday for the transfer of the boy to his father, Elian and some of his U.S. relatives spent the better portion of the day at the home of a Miami-area nun.

It was not clear how long they planned to stay with Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin, who has worked in the past to mediate the custody dispute.

A spokesman for the Miami relatives said the group went to O'Laughlin's gated house in Miami Beach seeking a calmer place than the family house in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood.

That turn of events followed the cancellation of Wednesday's planned face-to-face meeting in Washington between Elian, his father and the Miami relatives battling to keep the boy in the United States. Later in the afternoon, the Justice Department revealed that Attorney General Janet Reno would fly to Miami to participate in the discussions aimed at determining young Elian's fate.

CNN Producers Ted Barrett and Terry Frieden contributed to this report.