Pressure To Return Cuban Boy

A representative of the National Council of Churches met Monday with a Cuban man to discuss efforts to return his 6-year-old son, who has been in Miami since being rescued at sea in November.

"We are puzzled why it has taken so long," the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, the council's former general secretary, said after her arrival in Cuba late Sunday night. "We thought the child would have been returned by now."

Campbell arrived at the father's house in Cardenas, a two-hour drive east of Havana, and walked past reporters to enter the house without commenting.

U.S. officials gave custody of the boy, Elian Gonzalez, to his paternal great-uncle after he was found clinging to an inner tube off the Florida coast. Elian's mother died in the apparent attempt to illegally emigrate to the United States.

CBS station WFOR-TV says that a press conference will be held in Miami at 5 p.m., in which Gonzalez's U.S.-based family members will respond to the day's events.

The case has become a political tug-of-war with the boy's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, and Cuban President Fidel Castro demanding that the boy be returned to Cuba and the great-uncle fighting to keep the child with him in Miami.

People on both sides of the Florida Straits have used the case to make their own political points for or against Castro's communist government.

Campbell informed the White House about the group's trip and efforts to reunite Elian with his father. The council is the largest U.S. ecumenical organization, representing 35 Protestant and Orthodox denominations comprising 52 million congregants.

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service postponed until Jan. 21 a hearing that had been scheduled before Christmas, dragging out Elian's case for another month.

Campbell and the Rev. Oscar Bolioli, director of the council's office for Latin America and the Caribbean, took part in the meeting at the Gonzalez house. Also attending were Elian's four grandparents and a great-grandmother, all of whom want the boy returned to Cuba.

The council has been working with the Cuban Council of Churches on the case, Campbell said.

Campbell wrapped up her term as general secretary with the beginning of the new year Saturday, but she said the new general secretary, the Rev. Robert W. Edgar, asked her to make the trip because of her experience in dealing with Cuba.