Judges to Hear Arguments on Whether Boy Can Seek Asylum

                  By Karen DeYoung
                  Washington Post Staff Writer

                  ATLANTA, May 10—Elian Gonzalez's Miami relatives will have 20
                  minutes Thursday to make their case before three federal judges that the
                  6-year-old shipwreck victim is old enough to decide whether he wants to
                  return to Cuba with his father.

                  The long-awaited hearing at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals here
                  will determine whether a lower court erred when it ruled in March that the
                  Immigration and Naturalization Service acted within the law and its own
                  regulations in refusing to consider political asylum applications filed on
                  Elian's behalf by his great-uncle and one application signed by Elian
                  himself.

                  The Justice Department will argue that the INS was correct in ruling that a
                  surviving parent, in this case Elian's Cuban father, has the sole right to
                  speak for a child so young, and that immigration law gives the attorney
                  general wide discretion in deciding whether to consider asylum
                  applications. In addition, the government has argued that, even if he were
                  given asylum consideration, there is no evidence that Elian would meet the
                  standard of likely persecution in Cuba.

                  The father, who arrived in the United States from Havana on April 6, says
                  that neither he nor Elian wants to remain in this country. The relatives have
                  charged that the father and Cuban government officials are "brainwashing"
                  Elian against them--the same charge that the Cuban government made
                  about the Miami relatives during the five months the boy spent in South
                  Florida.

                  After the 15-minute government presentation, the father's attorney will
                  have five minutes to speak to the judges. The father, Juan Miguel
                  Gonzalez, said in a brief filed last week that Elian's great-uncle Lazaro
                  Gonzalez was trying to usurp his parental rights and destroy his family.

                  The court could take months to issue its opinion, although immigration
                  experts have said they expect it to be decided in a matter of weeks. Its
                  ruling can be appealed to the entire 12-member appeals court, or to the
                  U.S. Supreme Court.

                  The three-judge panel includes Reagan appointee James Edmundson, 52;
                  Bush appointee Joel Dubina, 52; and Clinton appointee Charles Wilson,
                  45. Although the 11th Circuit is normally considered highly favorable to the
                  government in immigration matters, interim rulings in the Elian case have
                  surprised some experts.

                  In granting an injunction last month against Elian's departure from this
                  country until the appeal is finished, the judges indicated that the relatives'
                  contention that a 6-year-old could understand and be responsible for
                  requesting political asylum merited some consideration, and they criticized
                  the INS for not interviewing the boy in person.

                  The staid court proceedings will be a marked contrast to the last major
                  development in the case, when Elian was seized on April 22 by armed
                  federal agents in a predawn raid at Lazaro Gonzalez's Miami home.
                  Although Republican members of Congress sharply criticized the raid and
                  called for emergency hearings, the controversy quickly abated--and the
                  hearings were indefinitely postponed--after public opinion polls indicated
                  most Americans approved of the raid and of Elian's return to Cuba.

                  Since then, Elian has been living with his father, his stepmother and his
                  infant half-brother in a private home at the Wye River Conference Center,
                  on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Although attorney Gregory B. Craig said the
                  father will not attend the hearing, the Miami relatives, including Lazaro
                  Gonzalez, his daughter Marisleysis and his brother, Delfin, plan to be there.
                  They will be represented by former U.S. attorney Kendall Coffey, one of
                  their team of a dozen attorneys in Miami.

                  On the Eastern Shore, Elian has been kept company by four schoolmates
                  and their parents, a cousin, his pediatrician and his former kindergarten
                  teacher, who is providing schooling for the children each morning. The INS
                  said today that the children, who arrived April 27 with visas for two
                  weeks, would be allowed to stay an additional two weeks on the
                  recommendation of a government-appointed social worker and psychiatrist
                  who went there last Thursday and reported that the visitors were helping
                  Elian readjust to a more normal life.

                  According to the Justice Department, the two said that Elian was becoming
                  more used to not being the center of attention after spending five months in
                  Miami under constant scrutiny by the news media and Cuban Americans
                  who demonstrated for him to remain in the United States. They have said
                  he appears to have a warm and close relationship with his father and was
                  sleeping and eating normally.

                  Their report, which was given to the appeals court and placed under seal
                  today, said that Elian--who spent two days adrift in the Atlantic Ocean
                  after the migrant shipwreck in which his mother drowned last
                  November--had expressed fears of returning to Cuba by boat, and of
                  being placed in jail there. They said his father had assured him they would
                  travel by airplane, and that he would return to his previous life in the town
                  of Cardenas, 90 miles east of Havana.

                  Meanwhile, the Cuban government sharply protested U.S. refusal to issue
                  immediate visas to Elian's paternal and maternal grandparents and the
                  grandparents of his half-brother. In an official diplomatic note, Cuba said
                  the grandparents "feared that any complication with the court decision
                  could make it more difficult to meet with the boy."

                  The State Department denied Cuba's contention that the visas had been
                  verbally approved and then pulled back at the last minute, saying they were
                  still "under review."