By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

          WASHINGTON -- Elian Gonzalez spent a secluded Easter with his father, insulated from the clatter in two nation's
          capitals and a shaken Miami over the armed raid used to take him away.

          "Finally," said his father's lawyer, "some silence around them."

          After a day of raw anger, street fires and violence in the Little Havana neighborhood, Miami fell quiet for Easter
          celebration Sunday morning, still under tight police control after more than 350 arrests.

          "We will celebrate in tears," said Sergio Perez, a Miami neighbor of the relatives who kept Elian for five months until
          federal agents brandishing guns burst through their door before dawn Saturday and seized him. Later Sunday, scores
          of chanting protesters returned to the neighborhood.

          In Washington, near the heavily secured air base where the 6-year-old Cuban boy is staying, a congressional Republican
          leader "sickened" by the use of force said hearings were certain on Capitol Hill.

          "This is a frightening event, that American citizens now can expect that the executive branch on their own can decide on
          whether to raid a home," said House Republican whip Tom DeLay of Texas, joining criticism made by George W. Bush,
          the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi.

          "There was no court order that gave them permission to raid the private home of American citizen," DeLay said,
          appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press. "This has been a bungled mess."

          But a top Justice official said the only regret was that authorities waited as long as they did.

          "We were forced into the action we took by the intransigence of that family," said Eric Holder, deputy attorney general.
          "We probably should have taken a decisive action sooner."

          Holder, also on NBC, said a previous court ruling upholding the government's general actions in the case, combined
          with an order from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, sufficed as legal grounds for moving in.

          He acknowledged concern by the administration that Elian may be used by Cuban President Fidel Castro as a political
          trophy.

          "That is Fidel Castro's history," Holder said. "He has shown that he has always tried to use whatever he can for his own
          political advantage."

          Indeed, Castro called Saturday "a day of glory for our people" as some 400,000 Cubans summoned to a rally
         celebrated the father-and-son reunion.

          Praising U.S. officials for their forceful action, the communist leader declared a "truce" in his enduring Cold War-era
          struggle with the United States, but added: "Tomorrow the battle continues."

          U.S. officials, anticipating Elian will go back to Cuba when court appeals are through, hoped to influence Cuban officials
          on how the boy is treated in his homeland.

          Elian, for once, was out of earshot of all the fuss. He joined his father, stepmother and baby half-brother Saturday in
          private quarters at Andrews Air Force Base, the home base of Air Force One.

          "Finally they have some time together, some space together, some privacy together, some silence around them so that
          the circus atmosphere and that environment down in Miami (are) no longer inflicted upon this boy," Gregory Craig,
          lawyer for the father, said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

          Elian was rescued at sea on Thanksgiving Day after a boat carrying him and other Cuban refugees sank. His mother
          drowned.

          Miami relatives, flying to Washington soon after Elian was taken from their arms, were rebuffed again Sunday in trying
          to get on to the base to see him.

          "I will not leave until I see this boy," Marisleysis Gonzalez, the 21-year-old cousin who acted as Elian's surrogate mother,
          told a Washington news conference. "I know he's not OK."

          With Juan Miguel Gonzalez holed up with his two sons and second wife at Andrews, the only accounts of Elian's state of
          mind since the reunion came from Craig and another supporter, Rev. Joan Brown Campbell.

          She said on ABC's "This Week" that Elian acted like a "very happy, mischievous, normal little boy" when she visited
          Saturday.

          Craig released two photos after the reunion, showing Elian smiling in his father's embrace and playing with his baby
          brother. The Miami relatives contended the images were manipulated.

          Immigration agents who accompanied Elian on the flight to Andrews reported that when they left him with his father at
          the base, he was "happily playing on the floor," said Maria Cardona, speaking for the INS.

          Wailing as he was carried off in Miami, Elian was calm on the plane, she said, napping on an immigration officer's lap,
          coloring and, at one point, crying a bit.

          In a national CNN-Gallup poll taken after the seizure, six in 10 respondents supported the government's actions to
          reunite Elian with his father. They were split on whether the government used too much force.

          That question percolated through Washington and in the presidential campaign.

          "I was sickened," DeLay said. "There was no danger to Elian. ... There was no danger to anyone. In fact, the
          government put these people in danger by invading their house."

          Attorney General Janet Reno, whose decision to use force was supported by President Clinton, said authorities had
          heard guns might be in the house or in the hands of crowds keeping vigil outside.

          Holder said the government had no firm evidence about guns but given the possibility, "we had to make sure that our
          people were protected."

          "It's Monday morning quarterbacking at its worst," he said of the criticisms.

          Bush said Saturday the raid "defies the values of America and is not an image a freedom-loving nation wants to show the
          world." Lott said his first thought was that "this could only happen in Castro's Cuba."