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Castro Exploits Elian Again CNSNews.comThe surprise visit to Elian Gonzalez by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and South African President Thabo Mbeki displeased the Miami attorneys who represented the child's relatives in the battle to keep the child in the United States. Other members of the Cuban exile community are upset as well. One of the lead attorneys in the case for keeping the young lad in America, Kendall Coffey of Miami, told CNSNews.com that Castro insisted he would not use Elian for political purposes. "He insisted that he would not exploit Elian. We predicted, and it's painful to be vindicated in this way, that he would assuredly be used as a tool to promote the revolution, and that event confirms that he is a trophy for Fidel Castro," Coffey told CNSNews.com in a telephone interview Friday from Miami. "Castro will always use Elian as his victory trophy against the United States. Elian is basically incommunicado with anybody from the United States. It's frustrating because no one knows what's really going on with him. It's clear that everything regarding Elian has always been political as far as Castro is concerned. It does not surprise me that he's using Elian as his political trophy," attorney Linda Osberg-Braun said Friday in a telephone interview from Miami with CNSNews.com. A spokesman for Elian's Miami relatives also said, in effect, we told you so. "We've said all along that Castro would show him off. Castro is a crazy man who will do anything to get publicity," according to Armando Gutierrez, a spokesman for Elian's Miami relatives in a telephone interview with CNSNews.com. The Cuban American National Foundation, a nemesis of the Castro government, felt the same way. "This is the one victory for Castro against the United States. He was able to take this poor little boy back to join the other 11 million prisoners, and he's going to use him [Elian] as a trophy every chance he gets," CANF Executive Vice President Dennis Hayes told CNSNews.com. Other critics in Florida's Cuban-American community say he has turned Elian into a political trophy, but the Castro government insists the boy has been treated with discretion and successfully reinserted into normal life. The Elian meeting was closed to the foreign press. It was reported in Thursday's edition of the Cuban Communist Party newspaper, Granma. The newspaper said, "Stung by curiosity, the South African leader Thabo Mbeki did not want to miss the miracle of personally meeting Elian Gonzalez." The newspaper also said Mbeki and Castro first met Elian's relatives, then showed a "rather paternal tenderness" during the school visit, where the newspaper said both leaders watched Elian "dancing happily" in an activity with other students. Other than Castro, Mbeki was believed to be the highest-level world leader to have met Elian, now 7 years old and at one time the center of a custody dispute between his Miami and Cuban relatives for several months. Elian returned to Cuba with his father last June after lengthy court battles in the United States. Copyright CNSNews.com
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