He Belongs With His Father

UNTIL ELIAN Gonzalez's father came to the United States, it was reasonable to doubt the sincerity of his expressed desire to have his child returned to Fidel Castro's repressive realm. Now he has had the opportunity to repeat that wish in the presence of U.S. officials, with no Cuban officials in the room and with his wife and baby at his side. We are about as close to certainty as we are likely to get. The intransigence of Elian's Miami relatives is therefore increasingly indefensible, and their publicity campaign--particularly the video they released of Elian demanding that his father not take him to Cuba--increasingly disturbing.

The great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, has basically dared Attorney General Janet Reno to come get Elian by force. Perhaps he believes that such a spectacle--to include, possibly, struggles between authorities and demonstrators, and the boy's own televised tears--will somehow vindicate his cause in the eyes of the world. He's wrong. Cuban Americans have a legitimate case against Mr. Castro and a legitimate right to make his downfall their cause. In the matter of Elian, however, emotion has overtaken legal and political judgment. Most viewers of this ripe-for-cancellation soap opera will think that the relatives, if they truly had Elian's interests at heart, would be preparing him for an inevitable transition, not turning him against his father.

Mr. Castro's failed rule is the ultimate cause of Elian's ill-fated voyage and, hence, this entire sad affair. But Cuban Americans in Miami need to wake up to the fact that, by pursuing this crusade in this manner, they are losing the propaganda battle to those who doubt--wrongly--the repressiveness of Mr. Castro's regime.

Contributing to a sense that things are spiraling out of control is the spectacle of the attorney general of the United States and the commissioner of immigration and naturalization services both flying to Miami to beg one recalcitrant great-uncle to, please, please, obey the law. Now a federal appeals court has intervened, and yet another Reno deadline has fallen by the wayside. If the effect of the ruling is to keep Elian in the United States until his Miami relatives have exhausted their legal remedies, that's as it should be. But neither the relatives nor the administration--nor, for that matter, the courts--should be keeping Elian from his father any longer.