By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

          NEW YORK (AP) -- The United States has urged Cuba to support the
          reunification of divided families in the same way it championed the return
          of 6-year-old shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez to his Cuban father, a
          senior State Department official said.

          Citing Cuba's ``very heartening'' support for Elian, U.S. officials gave the
          Cuban delegation at the first U.S.-Cuban migration talks this year a list of
          divided families that want to be reunited in the United States, said Deputy
          Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield.

          Washington also urged President Fidel Castro's government to drop
          barriers to the legal departure of Cubans and to allow U.S. officials to
          register a new pool of Cubans interested in legally migrating to the United
          States, hopefully in 2001, he said after Thursday's talks.

          While there was no immediate response on these issues, Brownfield said
          both countries expressed a commitment to end the organized criminal
          smuggling of Cubans to the United States.

          ``Both sides expressed their commitment to enforce their laws to put a
          stop to this dangerous and totally unnecessary practice,'' he told a news
          conference.

          The U.S. assessment of the meeting was far more measured than a
          Cuban government communique which complained that ``absolutely
          nothing had come out of'' the meeting and called for a mass mobilization
          Monday to protest American immigration policies.

          The statement also blamed U.S. immigration policies for this week's
          commandeering of a state-owned crop-duster plane to fly a group of
          people out of Cuba.

          The crop duster crashed Tuesday in the southern Gulf of Mexico about
          50 miles west of Cuba, killing one of the 10 people on board. The others
          were rescued by a merchant ship and taken to Key West, Fla.

          Cuba charges the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act encourages its citizens to
          undertake risky journeys to the United States because the law allows any
          Cuban who reaches American soil to apply for U.S. residency. Most
          Cubans picked up at sea are repatriated.

          ``So no other alternative remains except to battle without truce against
          the brutal and murderous (Cuban Adjustment Act), which everyday
          draws a bit more Cuban blood,'' the Cuban statement added.

          The talks are held under accords reached after the 1994 migration crisis
          when more than 30,000 rafters and boaters set out across the Florida
          Straits. Since January 1995, the agreement has enabled 133,000 Cubans
          to migrate legally to the United States.

          Talks are normally held twice a year, alternating between Havana and
          New York. The last talks were in Havana in December and the next
          round should have been in June but they were delayed by the Cubans
          during the controversy over Elian.

          Elian was returned from the United States to Juan Miguel Gonzalez, his
          father in Cuba, in late June after a seven-month legal battle with the boy's
          relatives in Miami. During the battle, the Cuban government argued the
          boy should be with his father and the family not split up.

          Brownfield indicated that the United States thought Cuba might cancel
          Thursday's meeting because of the crop-duster theft.

          ``They did not. And to that extent, I could say we got as much out of
          these talks today as we realistically thought we would -- or could -- get,''
          he said.

          During the meeting, the U.S. government also questioned Cuba's demand
          for $600 in U.S. currency -- the equivalent of an average Cuban's salary
          over three to four years -- in exit fees to migrate, which means poor
          people can never afford to depart legally, Brownfield said. And it called
          for a ban on migration of medical personnel to be lifted.

          Cuba's delegation at the meeting was headed by National Assembly
          President Ricardo Alarcon.