With Elian home, Cuba presses attacks on U.S. policy

June 30, 2000
Web posted at: 12:39 a.m. EDT (0439 GMT)

HAVANA (CNN) -- With Elian Gonzalez finally back in Cuba and in seclusion, the island's government has begun using the outcome of his saga to intensify attacks on the United States' anti-Cuba policy.

On Thursday, beyond the halls of government, hidden from the glare of cameras and the jostling of reporters, the Gonzalez family began decompressing in a home in the Miramar section of Havana.

Arriving in Cuba Wednesday night, the family went to the government guest house for a stay of about three weeks so Elian can continue catching up on school work.

Cuban sources told CNN that Elian's father, Juan Miguel, has forcefully said that "he never wants to see a camera pointed at his son again."

The neighborhood where the family and their entourage are staying has been sealed off to outsiders.

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"Life is normal but the press is not allowed," a police officer told reporters on a nearby street. "You know the reasons why, and we are asking for your understanding."

The government said the family will return to their hometown of Cardenas.

In Miami, spokesman for Lazaro Gonzalez and his family, who fought in court to keep Elian in the United States, said: "They were very sad. Lazaro was very sad that Elian was not happy when he got to Cuba."

"He's never wanted to go back to Cuba, and we saw it in his face," said the spokesman, Armando Gutierrez. "We saw the fact that there was not even a chemistry between Elian and his grandmothers."

Meanwhile, relations between Havana and Washington may never be the same. Elian's return is clearly viewed as a victory by the Cuban leadership, which seems emboldened, pressing attacks on U.S. policy toward the island.

Cuban officials have said the boy's return is only the beginning of their struggle against anti-Cuba U.S. policies.

At a weekly foreign ministry briefing, spokeswoman Aymee Hernandez said the Castro government will not only target U.S. policy, but will push for the U.S. to get off Cuban soil.

"Our country will not only fight for the elimination of the Cuban Adjustment Act, but also for the return of the U.S. naval base that is in Guantanamo," she said.

And while she praised the "good intentions" of U.S. legislators who moved to free up food and medicine sales to her island, she said the media had mistakenly interpreted the move as a historic "relaxing" of the economic sanctions on communist-run Cuba.

"Let's get this straight," she told foreign correspondents in Havana. "What we see here is a cosmetic measure which, far from relaxing it, is in fact strengthening the embargo."

The move, promoted by the U.S. farm lobby and brokered by Republican leaders in Congress, would allow food and medicines sales to Cuba for the first time since President Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.

In final negotiations, anti-Castro Washington lawmakers managed to include in the proposal a prohibition on official or private funding for the sales, and a specific codification of an existing bar on American tourism on the Caribbean island.

The legislation requires all deals must be in cash, "and you know perfectly well that Cuba is a Third World country," Hernandez said.

Neither, under the embargo regulations, can Cuba recoup money by exporting to the United States, much as it also would like to sell medicines such as its locally developed vaccines or food such as oranges and guavas, she said.

"If it is approved, it will only raise more obstacles for clean and unconditional trade between Cuba and the United States," Hernandez added. "The problem is not whether we can buy medicines from the United States, but the onerous conditions they impose for purchases."

How Cubans plan to fight for the Guantanamo base, a strategic U.S. military installation on the eastern side of Cuba, is not clear.

CNN Miami Bureau Chief John Zarrella and Reuters contributed to this report.

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