BY JAY WEAVER

 The legal team for Elian Gonzalez's relatives will race to Miami family court this morning to ask a state judge to stop his father from returning with the boy to Cuba as part of their request for a full hearing on Juan Miguel Gonzalez's fitness as a parent.

 Lawyers for Elian's great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez want state Circuit Judge Jennifer Bailey to bar the boy's removal from Miami because they worry that once the U.S. government hands over the 6-year-old to his father, they will leave immediately for Cuba.

 In family court papers, they expressed fear that the father, now in Washington, D.C., won't stay for the relatives' appeal of a recent federal court decision that upheld Attorney General Janet Reno's decision to reunite the little boy with Juan Miguel Gonzalez.

 But Bailey, in an order filed Sunday, raised serious questions about whether the family court could even conduct such a hearing on the father's fitness because of the supremacy of federal law and the parental rights of Juan Miguel Gonzalez.

 The judge also cited Florida law to point out that the great-uncle may not be able to seek temporary custody of the boy because the statute only allows ''the child's brother, sister, grandparent, aunt, uncle or cousin'' to make such a claim in court. She told the Miami relatives' lawyers to respond to her questions by today, and then she will decide whether to grant their request for the custody hearing in 10 days.

 HEARING DELAYED

 Lazaro Gonzalez was awarded emergency custody of Elian on Jan. 10 by another circuit court judge, after the great-uncle sued the father to obtain temporary custody of the boy. But after Bailey took over the case, she delayed a full hearing on allegations that Elian would be harmed if raised by his father in Cuba until the relatives' federal court case was resolved. Their legal team filed their first appellate papers Monday, arguing that even a minor as young as Elian has a legal right to seek political asylum. Oral arguments are scheduled in that case for May 11.

 The team, frustrated by the enormous powers of the U.S. government in the custody and immigration disputes, is also likely to seek an emergency order this week from the federal court to block the boy's return to Cuba before the appeal is over.

 ''If Elian goes back to Cuba, no one in this land can bring him back,'' said Kendall Coffey, one of the team's attorneys.

 NO GUARANTEE

 Reno said she could not guarantee that the boy will stay with his son in Washington until the outcome of the relatives' appeal. But she indicated that Juan Miguel Gonzalez promised he would wait out that appeal.

 The Immigration and Naturalization Service, backed by Reno, found that only the father could speak for the boy, following the loss of his mother in late November on a tragic boat trip from Cuba. The government, after two interviews with Juan Miguel Gonzalez, found that he had a loving, caring relationship with his son.

 But Gonzalez family attorney Jose Garcia-Pedrosa said the government has ignored evidence, filed in the federal court case, that the father has been abusive toward his son -- physically and verbally.

 ''We have said and the boy has said -- he has told psychiatrists -- that he's deathly afraid of his father because his father beat him up,'' Garcia-Pedrosa said Sunday on CBS' Face the Nation.

 On Monday, he told The Herald: ''I have talked to the boy about that myself.''

 Garcia-Pedrosa declined to elaborate, saying that Lazaro Gonzalez did not want the lawyers to talk about the father's alleged unfitness earlier in the dispute but that he changed his mind in recent weeks.

 ''The other side is saying that we're just saying it now because we're desperate,'' Garcia-Pedrosa said.

 But a prominent family law expert said that desperation is precisely why the Miami relatives' legal team has started to defame Elian's father in public.

 ''This is all a last-ditch, desperate attempt to concoct claims that cannot be proven,'' University of Miami law Professor Bernard Perlmutter said. ''It's unconscionable that these type of blustery, malicious claims are going on. But it doesn't surprise me, because they have essentially lost in the federal court. This is the stock in trade of family lawyers to malign and cast aspersions in an ad hominem way on the other side. They are dragging Elian into the morass.''