Clinton says end of Elian Gonzalez case shows administration was on right track

Supports lifting of Cuba sanctions -- while talking tough

By Ian Christopher McCaleb/CNN

June 28, 2000
Web posted at: 6:52 p.m. EDT (2252 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Clinton, speaking to reporters at a formal White House news conference on Wednesday, said the day's return of young Elian Gonzalez to his native Cuba after seven contentious months in the United States justified the actions of his administration -- specifically the Justice Department -- as Elian's custody was played out in U.S. courts.

President Clinton spoke to the press Wednesday at a news conference.

Clinton said Wednesday that Elian's chapter in the United States was drawing to a close as it should -- he would be heading home with his father.

"He's a good father, a loving father committed to his son's welfare," Clinton said of Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who spent three months in the United States hoping to regain custody of his son, and then waited for permission to leave.

Elian arrived in the United States last November after a disastrous boat accident took the life of his mother as they and a number of others attempted to cross the straits between the communist-controlled island nation and the southern tip of Florida.

The six-year-old's well publicized plight touched off a gargantuan international custody battle between his Miami relations, who took him in and worked vigorously to keep the boy within the confines of the United States, and Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who wanted Elian returned to him in Cuba.

The Supreme Court announced Wednesday morning that it would not hear a request for action submitted by lawyers representing the Miami family, who wanted a court-imposed stay on Elian's departure kept in place past its 4 p.m. Wednesday deadline.

With the court's refusal, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, Elian, and the rest of their family and friends departed the U.S. for Havana late in Wednesday afternoon.

International custody battles, coupled with questions of citizenship and murkier legal matters, Clinton said, are exceedingly difficult to sort out. But despite all the criticism of his administration in the wake of last Easter's forceful raid to remove Elian from the home of his Miami family, today's outcome vindicated the administration position that Elian's best interest rested with his father.

"If his father had decided he wanted to stay here, that would fine with me," Clinton mused.

International observers and the Clinton administration's most ardent foreign policy critics have waited on tenterhooks for months to see how the president would handle U.S. relations with Cuba once the Gonzalez case was resolved. Many far right foes of the president have accused the administration of working hand-in-hand with Cuban President Fidel Castro to resolve the Gonzalez case in Cuba's favor.

But Clinton toughened his stance on Cuba on Wednesday, using the Gonzalez developments and the creation of a bill in the House of Representatives that would relax the 40-year-old U.S. trade embargo just enough to allow exports of food and medicine to the Caribbean nation as springboards to express hope of better connections with the Cuban people, but exhibiting a hard line against the Castro regime.

Of the House bill, drafted by Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Washington, Clinton said, "If I believe that the legislation essentially allows for the sales of American food and medicine to Cuba or for other countries, but has protections for us under extraordinary circumstances, then I would be inclined to sign the bill."

Still, the president said he has "some concerns," adding that though he believed it was time to move forward on normalizing relations with Cuba, the Cuban government must be held accountable for the 1996 destruction of two U.S. civilian aircraft, and the deaths of those on board.

A visibly agitated Clinton slammed his fist onto the East Room podium as he described how, through the early years of his administration, he had sought to implement the Cuba Democracy Act, signed by his predecessor, President George Bush. The act, Clinton said, was designed to gradually open U.S. relations with the Havana government.

The process was halted abruptly in 1995, Clinton said, when Cuban Air Force MiGs downed two propeller-driven planes operated by a Miami-based exile group, which were reportedly flying over international waters near the Cuban coast. All aboard, American citizens of Cuban descent, were killed.

Cuba, he said angrily, "deliberately killed, murdered two airplanes filled with people. That changed everything. That was deliberate murder. And it made me wonder whether Mr. Castro really wanted to normalize relations."

Now, Clinton intimated, contacts between the U.S. and Cuba -- and improvements in relations -- would have to be accomplished through civilian exchanges, rather than through high-level diplomacy. The Cuban government, he said, would "have to reach out to us."

Red letter day for the president

Clinton might not have picked a better day for one of his occasional news gatherings. With the Supreme Court issuing its final decisions before justices scattered for their summer break, and the House considering a prescription drug coverage plan for Medicare beneficiaries, the president had many immediate subjects at hand to address.

The news conference was initially planned to urge House Republican leaders to abandon their plan for limited drug coverage, and embrace the administration's call for a blanket drug insurance provision under Medicare, which would extend prescription drug coverage to all of the 39 million people now on Medicare's rolls.

A new study, Clinton said, indicated that the cost of prescriptions is up 10 percent over last year, making it imperative to extend immediate help to seniors -- many of whom live on fixed incomes.

"We have to extend affordable, reliable prescription drug coverage to all seniors," Clinton said.

Of the Republican bill under consideration in the House, which is intended to provide subsidies to private insurance companies in an effort to entice them to create their own prescription drug plans, Clinton said, "the bill is an empty promise for too many of seniors."

"This bill is destined to benefit the companies who make the prescription drugs, not the seniors who have to take them," he said.

The Democratic alternative, he said, wasn't included as part of the debate on the House bill because "I suspect they are afraid it will pass."

Addressing the Supreme Court's ruling that the Boy Scouts of America are within their right to bar homosexuals from serving as scoutmasters, Clinton said he thought the Boy Scouts were a "great group," but he was "against discrimination against gays."

And, when asked about the high court's narrow ruling striking down Nebraska's ban on a procedure abortion opponents call "partial-birth" abortion, the president sounded an election year alarm for the Democratic faithful. Such a close decision, he said, indicated just how close the court could be on reviewing the landmark 1973 decision in the Roe vs. Wade case that legalized abortion.

"In the next four years, maybe between two and four appointments will be made to the court," Clinton said. "The vote for 'Roe' is in the balance."

Vice President Al Gore, the presumed Democratic nominee for the presidency this year, has the breadth of experience to address court and other issues, Clinton said, in perhaps his most forceful and direct endorsement yet of Gore over GOP presidential hopeful George W. Bush.

"I believe he is right on the issues," Clinton said. "No person has had a more positive impact on this country as vice president than Al Gore has had. That is an historical fact."

The president perked up when questioned about campaign funding allegations that continue to swirl around his 1996 re-election effort, saying he had been saddled with "bogus scandals," and Gore should not have to pay the political price for such "garbage."

"The word 'scandal' has been thrown around here like a clanging teapot for seven years," he said. None of them, he proclaimed, have yielded true wrongdoing.

Gore, he argued further, did himself a great favor by releasing last week the transcript of his April interview with Justice Department campaign finance investigators, who were looking into the vice president's role in the alleged 1996 irregularities.

The head of the Justice Department's campaign financing task force has recommended that Attorney General Janet Reno appoint a special counsel to pursue the matter. Reno has refused, saying the information available to her at present does not warrant a deeper probe.

"The fact that he released the transcript is good for America," he said. "The attorney general has shown no reluctance in appointing special counsels when she has seen fit ... I think the best thing is for the American people to make their own decision."