By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday , April 25, 2000 ; A01

In arguments filed in federal court yesterday, the Justice Department said that there is no evidence that Elian Gonzalez helped
prepare or understood an application for political asylum that bears his signature, no evidence that he would meet the standards
for granting asylum and no reason for his Miami great-uncle's views on these matters to outweigh those of Elian's father.

At the same time, the department argued, there is no basis for the court to conclude that Attorney General Janet Reno and the
Immigration and Naturalization Service violated the law or administrative guidelines in refusing to consider the application for
asylum. The 85-page brief, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, asks for the appeal of great-uncle
Lazaro Gonzalez to be dismissed.

Following the surprise predawn seizure of Elian by armed federal agents from the Miami home of Lazaro Gonzalez Saturday,
the appeal has become the focus of the legal dispute over whether the 6-year-old boy stays in the United States or eventually
returns to Cuba with his father. Oral arguments are scheduled for May 11.

In asking the court to overturn a District Court ruling last month that upheld the INS decision, Lazaro Gonzalez argued that
Elian has said he does not want to go to Cuba, that he will be persecuted there and that the government violated its own
regulations in refusing to consider his application for asylum.

After Elian was reunited Saturday morning with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, attorneys for the Miami relatives warned that
Cuban government representatives here would try to "brainwash" the boy into repudiating the asylum application. They
suggested that the father's attorney, Gregory B. Craig, would file a motion with the court asking that the case be dismissed as
moot since Elian--after being returned to his father's care--no longer wanted to stay here.

Craig said yesterday that legal strategy in the case, including whether the father will initiate any court action himself, was still
being decided. "We're not going to talk about it," he said.

Meanwhile, although the two sides of the Gonzalez family were both still in the Washington area yesterday, their paths did not
cross.

Juan Miguel Gonzalez, his wife, Elian and Elian's 6-month-old half-brother are expected to leave Andrews Air Force Base
today to take up residence at a secluded, nearby international conference center, most likely Wye Plantation on Maryland's
Eastern Shore. Craig reported that Elian played during the day with the Spanish-speaking son of an Andrews officer and with
Pablo Remirez, the 10-year-old son of Cuba's chief diplomat in Washington, Fernando Remirez.

"It's clear they have to move," Fernando Remirez said of the base, which is usually open to the public but has been under heavy
security since the Gonzalezes took up residence Saturday.

Remirez insisted "there is nobody working with the child" or staying with them from the Cuban government. "It is not our
responsibility," Remirez said. "We are not in charge, the U.S. marshals are." He said that the Cubans had responded to
Gonzalez family requests for Cuban food, clothing and supplies for the infant.

Under orders from the appeals court and the INS, Elian is not allowed to leave the country while the appeal is pending.
Remirez said that Gonzalez had reiterated his request that some of Elian's schoolmates from Cuba be allowed to stay with him
here. In addition to 12 children, the Cuban government also has asked that mental health and education experts and a senior
Cuban government official be granted visas to be with the family here. Officials in Havana indicated over the weekend they
would no longer insist on a visa for Ricardo Alarcon, the head of Cuba's National Assembly. The State Department said
yesterday that the requests are still "under review."

Meanwhile, the Miami relatives, who have demanded to see Elian and Juan Miguel Gonzalez since arriving here on Saturday
afternoon, were turned away again at Andrews. At a news conference last night outside a nearby hotel, Lazaro Gonzalez and
his 21-year-old daughter, Marisleysis, stood as family spokesman Emilio Vasquez said that "we have tried through all
appropriate channels to make contact with the boy so that his family can truly be reunited. . . . I don't know what else the family
needs to do to speak to this father."

Political arguments over whether the seizure was necessary, and how it was undertaken, continued yesterday through television
appearances and public statements. Reno, on NBC's "Today" show, said she had "no regrets whatsoever" about the raid. She
disputed statements by a group of Miami mediators that an agreement with the relatives was near a successful conclusion.

The White House also went on the offensive, accusing prominent Republicans of distorting what happened for political gain and
making what spokesman Joe Lockhart called "wild statements, wildly inaccurate." Some Republicans, Lockhart said, "very
clearly have decided that there's some politics to be played here, some perceived political gain, and they are going to play with
it."

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who on Sunday compared the raid to something that "could only happen in
Castro's Cuba," scheduled a meeting with Reno today to address senators' concerns about the Justice Department's action.
About 10 other senators were invited, evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, although critics of the operation far
outnumbered those who supported it.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), who presided over 1998 impeachment hearings against President
Clinton, announced his panel's staff would begin "a preliminary inquiry" into the tactics used to seize the boy, at the request of
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).

Meanwhile, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, which represents more than 17,500 federal officers, issued a
statement expressing "strong disgust and dismay" over the criticism of the way the raid was conducted.

"To stigmatize career law enforcement officers because they utilize every tactical advantage during a law enforcement operation
(including looking 'mean') shows a total lack of knowledge and understanding of tactical training," the statement said.

In Miami yesterday, angry Cuban American exile leaders called for a "Dead Tuesday," a work stoppage from 6 a.m. until
midnight today to demand a federal probe of the Saturday morning raid at the Lazaro Gonzalez home. Ramon Saul Sanchez,
leader of the exile group Democracy Movement, said they hoped to "send a strong message that we want an investigation of
the outrageous act of violence committed by federal authorities," and hoped most businesses would close their doors.

The government's appeals court brief filed yesterday attempts to respond to the suggestion raised by the court last Wednesday,
when it granted the injunction requested by Lazaro Gonzalez against Elian leaving the country, that it might embrace the
relatives' argument that a 6-year-old's interests might legitimately diverge from those of his custodial parent.

"The question here is not whether Elian 'may' apply [for asylum], but whether he 'has applied,' " the government's brief said.
Three pending asylum applications, two signed by Lazaro Gonzalez, and one by Elian, "are otherwise identical. None is written
by Elian. None purports to be a statement by Elian of what he thinks has happened or will happen to him if he returns to Cuba.
None contains information that came from Elian.

"Someone else filled out those applications," the brief said. "Some adult, whether Lazaro or his attorneys, decided that he
would speak for Elian. But another adult, Elian's father, exercising his parental authority, has objected to this. This case is,
therefore, not about whether Elian has spoken about asylum. It is about which of two adults will be allowed to speak about
asylum for him: his father, with whom he has had a close relationship all his life until they were separated under traumatic
circumstances last November; or a distant relative."

The brief repeated the steps the INS took to assure itself of Elian's close relationship with its father and of Juan Miguel
Gonzalez's genuine desire to return with his son to Cuba. It noted the high standard an applicant must meet "to prove that he
suffered past persecution or will suffer future persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular
social group or political opinion. . . . Evidence of widespread human rights violations" in the country in question, it said, "is not
sufficient."

Staff writers Sue Anne Pressley in Miami, Helen Dewar, Hamil R. Harris and Sylvia Moreno contributed to this report.

                                 © 2000 The Washington Post Company