HAVANA -- (AP) -- A leader of the National Council of Churches
arrived in Cuba to
meet today with the father of a 6-year-old boy who was rescued
at sea and to
discuss efforts to return the child from the United States.
``We are puzzled why it has taken so long,'' said the Rev. Joan
Brown Campbell,
the council's outgoing general secretary, after her arrival late
Sunday night. ``We
thought the child would have been returned by now.''
The boy, Elian Gonzalez, was paroled by U.S. officials to his
paternal great-uncle
in Miami in late November after the boy was found clinging to
an inner tube off the
Florida coast. Elian's mother died in the apparent attempt to
illegally emigrate to
the United States.
The case has become a political tug-of-war, with the boy's father,
Juan Miguel
Gonzalez, demanding that his son be returned to him in Cuba and
the great-uncle
fighting to keep the child with him in Miami.
People on both sides of the Florida Straits have used the case
to make their own
political points for or against Fidel Castro's communist government.
Campbell informed the White House about the group's trip and efforts
to reunite
Elian with his father. The council is the United States' largest
ecumenical
organization, representing 35 Protestant and Orthodox denominations
comprising
52 million congregants.
The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service postponed until
Jan. 21 a hearing
that had been scheduled for before Christmas, dragging out Elian's
case for
another month.
Campbell and the Rev. Oscar Bolioli, director of the council's
office for Latin
America and the Caribbean, had a meeting scheduled today with
Gonzalez in the
family's hometown, Cardenas, a two-hour's drive east of Havana.
Also scheduled
to attend the meeting were Elian's four grandparents and a great-grandmother
--
all of whom want the boy returned to Cuba.
The council has been working with the Cuban Council of Churches
on the case,
Campbell said.
Campbell wrapped up her term as general secretary with the beginning
of the new
year on Saturday, but she said the new general secretary, the
Rev. Robert W.
Edgar, asked her to make the trip because of her two decades
of experience in
dealing with Cuba.