By ANITA SNOW
 Associated Press Writer

 HAVANA -- (AP) -- As news trickled in about dramatic events unfolding on the
 other side of the Florida Straits, Cubans anxiously awaited the return of 6-year-old
 Elian Gonzalez.

 ``It is the hour for this drama to end for the good of Elian and his desperate
 father,'' said Leida Ruseau, a 66-year-old cleaning woman who watched live CNN
 feeds of the crowds Thursday outside the home of Elian's Miami relatives.

 Ruseau was one of a small group of Cuban workers who crowded around a large
 color television at a foreign press center set up for journalists covering a summit
 of leaders from developing countries.

 ``That great-uncle is a kidnapper who has made an entire family and an entire
 nation suffer,'' she said.

 ``If the United States had acted with more authority in this matter, the child would
 already have been back with us,'' added Jose Ramon Montano.

 Very few Cubans have access to foreign television reports. Most have had to rely
 on the Cuban government to provide them with updates on the case during a
 ``roundtable discussion'' on state television at 5 p.m. daily.

 Still, most of those who had not seen the reports on American television knew
 about Thursday's deadline for the Miami relatives to turn over the child to his
 father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who flew to the United States last week.

 Some of the current developments were reported on government-controlled Radio
 Reloj and the noontime Television Rebelde.

 ``We are waiting for Elian,'' 42-year-old housewife Dinalba Labrada said as she
 bought government-ration rice and cooking oil at a corner food store. ``We are
 hoping they will turn him over. Hope is always the last thing a person loses. We
 have not lost ours yet.''

 At the ``Esquina Caliente'' -- the ``Hot Corner'' in Old Havana's Central Park -- the
 city's self-anointed baseball experts mixed pontification on the ongoing National
 Baseball Series with opinions about the Elian case.

 ``I would be afraid for Elian's father to go to Miami'' to claim the child, said Jorge
 Luis Ultria, a 33-year-old construction worker who spends several hours a day at
 the informal gathering of sports fanatics. ``Those people in Miami are capable of
 sabotage, even planting a bomb!''

 Some of the men were hopeful that the Miami relatives would be obligated to give
 up the boy, but most were pessimistic.

 ``I think that this could go on for at least two or three months -- even five months,''
 said Alberto Rosales, a 42-year-old self-employed mechanic who wore a baseball
 cap advertising Molson Canadian beer.

 Cubans were far more interested in the Elian case than the summit of leaders
 who gathered here this week to examine ways to increase the power and wealth
 of their developing nations.

 Cuban state television also showed its obsession with the case even as it covered
 the summit: Reporters tossed questions about Elian into interviews with the
 visiting heads of state. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe agreed that the
 child belonged with his father. So did Angolan President Jose Eduardo Dos
 Santos.

 ``Children belong to the care of their parents,'' Mexican Foreign Minister Rosario
 Green said.

 Caught up in the Elian battle, Fidel Castro's communist government barely
 promoted the summit until just before it opened on Monday. For 4 1/2 months,
 the fight for Elian has been the No. 1 priority of the government, which has rallied
 thousands of people in near-daily protests pressing for the boy's return.

 ``If Elian does come back, I will very proud, very glad,'' Ultria said amid his clutch
 of wildly gesticulating baseball experts. ``And when he comes back, we don't
 have to have a celebration.

 ``There will be a celebration and a pride in every Cuban heart,'' said Ultria,
 ``because we will all know that he is back where he should be.''

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald