HERALD STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

 WASHINGTON -- A psychiatrist who interviewed Elian Gonzalez and his father at the
 attorney general's request "found the family functioning very well as a family," INS
 Commissioner Doris Meissner said today.

 Elian, his father, stepmother and half brother were relocated Tuesday to the Wye
 Plantation, a secluded and privately owned 1,100-acre compound on Maryland's
 Eastern Shore located 70 miles from the nation's capital.

 "(The psychiatrist) said Elian was very playful, very active; he does a lot of watching
 and mimicking his father; he helps his father change the baby's diaper,'' Meissner said
 on NBC's "Today'' show.

 As for the Miami relatives' attempts to meet with Elian and his father, Meissner said,
 the doctor believes that issue is something "that the adults need to sort out among
 themselves.''

 Meissner added: "She said something I found very touching ... that the father is not
 hostile to the Miami relatives, he is very hurt. They have said very cruel things over
 recent weeks and the adults need to sort that out before the child is involved.''

 To test whether the boy had been traumatized by the military-style raid on the Miami
 house, the psychiatrist gave him toy soldiers to play with. Meissner said.

 "She said Elian played readily with the soldiers. ... He didn't seem in any way to be
 bothered by it,'' Meissner said.

 The State Department announced Tuesday it would issue visas to four of the boy's
 Cuban classmates so that the 6-year-old at the center of a hotly contested custody
 battle could have playmates at the sprawling estate.

 Each child, the State Department said, could bring an adult relative and stay no longer
 than two weeks.

 ''This is a group of four friends visiting for two weeks,'' one administration official
 said. ''This is not a school, not a circus.''

 A former kindergarten teacher of Elian's and a 10-year-old cousin, who were
 previously issued visas, could also come to visit him as today.

 On Saturday, federal agents raided the Little Havana home of Elian's Miami
 relatives who'd cared for him for almost five months and removed the boy. Hours
 later, he was reunited with his father.

 The raid, however, has drawn sharp criticism from Republican lawmakers and
 Cuban exiles. On Tuesday, exile groups organized a work stoppage that shut
 down parts of Miami. More protests were planned in the Washington area today
 and Thursday.

 The Gonzalez family's transfer from a townhouse at Andrews Air Force Base to
 the private Wye River compound was intended to give the family privacy and
 normalcy -- and to get them off a U.S.-owned military base.

 The compound is a private conference center owned by the Aspen Institute, a
 nonprofit foundation involved in global issues. Each of its three complexes has
 more than two-dozen rooms and elegant dining areas. Elian, his father Juan
 Miguel, stepmother Nercy and baby brother Hianny are expected to live there in
 seclusion while their family feud winds through appellate courts.

 Meanwhile, Elian's Miami relatives failed in another attempt to see the boy at
 Andrews on Tuesday shortly before he was taken to Wye. Georgina Cid, one of
 the Miami relatives, condemned base security for not allowing the family ''as
 American citizens'' to enter the base and accused U.S. marshals of ''kidnapping.''

 The Miami family said little else to reporters during the remainder of the day,
 ignoring pleas from members of the news media who trailed after them on Capitol
 Hill while visiting Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

 ''They just don't want to talk to anyone,'' said the family's escort, Emilio Vasquez
 of the Cuban American National Foundation.

 WHO PAYS?

 Administration sources said both the visa request and the move off the base
 came at the request of Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, through his attorney,
 Gregory Craig, but it was not immediately clear who will pay for the stay. Security
 will be provided by U.S. marshals, according to the Justice Department.

 ''The boy and the father are trying to be in the best possible environment, a calm
 one with no distractions so they can continue the reunification process of father
 and son,'' said Luis Fernandez, spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section in
 Washington.

 ''They're well. They feel happy.''

 Fernandez said he did not visit the Gonzalez family at the base, but others from
 the Cuban Interests Section brought them food and clothing.

 The Miami side of the Gonzalez family has wielded sharp criticisms of the
 decision to keep Elian out of the public eye. They question his health and
 happiness and suggest the privacy is meant to shield the world from learning his
 true whereabouts and conditions.

 ''My house was always open to cameras,'' cousin Marisleysis Gonzalez said.

 NEED OF SOLITUDE

 The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, a friend of Juan Miguel Gonzalez, said Elian and
 his father were simply in desperate need of solitude. ''Why is it so hard for people
 to grasp that they need time alone, to talk to each other?'' Campbell asked.

 ''He's a kid. He plays, reads books with his dad, and plays with toys,'' Campbell
 added. ''There has purposely not been a parade of visitors. They're keeping it
 private and are having a hard time doing that.''

 One visitor who did talk to the first-grader Tuesday was a child psychologist sent
 by the INS to help determine how best to tackle a prospective meeting with the
 boy and warring sides of his family.

 Dr. Paulina Kernberg, a professor of psychiatry at Cornell University Medical
 College, interviewed the father and Elian for 2 1/2 hours Tuesday but apparently
 made no immediate recommendation about the reunion with other members of the
 family.

 ''It's going to be tough,'' INS Commissioner Doris Meissner said. ''A lot of things
 were said about the father that were offensive to the father. It's natural that he
 wants some solitude with his son for a few days.''

 The psychologist's visit sparked reports on Miami's Spanish-language radio that
 the boy had been hospitalized for an emotional breakdown. Federal officials and
 others close to the case vehemently denied the rumor.

 CALLS FROM MIAMI

 U.S. marshals spokesman Bill Likotovich said he has spent much of Elian's three
 days in Maryland fielding telephone calls from people in Miami who believed the
 boy had been spirited out of the country and back to his communist island nation.

 ''I tell people that I had just seen the kid 10 minutes before,'' he said. ''They don't
 believe he's still here. I tell them, 'He's here. I've seen him.' And they ask me, 'Do
 you really believe that?' It's obvious this is a really intense and emotional issue.''

 The U.S. Marshals Service, he went on, has no evidence that the boy was
 hospitalized Tuesday.

 Officials do not yet know if the four children joining Elian will be among the 12
 Castro had wanted to fly to Washington along with several doctors, nurses and a
 political advisor to recreate a little Cuban village for Elian jokingly dubbed
 ''Cardenas on the Potomac.''

 State Department officials said the larger group should not be optimistic about
 getting visas. Three previously issued visas -- for Elian's kindergarten teacher,
 doctor and little cousin -- remain unused and available.

 Herald staff writers Frances Robles, Juan Tamayo and Frank Davies, special
 correspondent Ana Radelat, Online News Reporter Madeline Baro Diaz and Herald
 wire services contributed to this report.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald