By Anita Snow. .c The Associated Press
HAVANA, 16 (AP) - Elian Gonzalez's father asked Cuba's foreign minister to arrange for Cuban diplomats in the United States to visit his 6-year-old son in Miami, according to a letter published today.
``We are worried not only about his prolonged kidnapping,'' Gonzalez wrote in a letter published in the Communist Party daily Granma. ``We lack direct information about the concrete conditions to which he is subjected in his daily life.''
``I beg that you insist with the authorities of the United States that they grant this visit,'' Gonzalez wrote.
In a sign of his growing frustration, Gonzalez also wrote to Attorney General Janet Reno earlier this week, demanding that Elian be returned to him, saying he does not recognize the courts hearing the custody battle.
Gonzalez's second letter to Reno in as many weeks was published in Cuba on Tuesday on the front page of Granma.
``I formally object to the legal moves made or being made by those who are arbitrarily retaining Elian,'' Gonzalez said in the letter, dated Monday. In the letter, he said he does not recognize the jurisdiction of the U.S. court system, which is weighing an attempt by Elian's Miami relatives to
block his return to Cuba.
In Washington, Justice Department spokeswoman Carole Florman said the letter was received Monday night through the State Department. ``We're reviewing it,'' Florman said.
Elian has been the focus of an international custody battle since he was rescued from an inner tube off the Florida coast on Nov. 25. The boy's mother and 10 other people died when their boat sank en route from Cuba to the United States.
Elian is staying with his paternal great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez, who is fighting to keep the boy with him in the United States. Cuban exiles in Miami say the boy's mother died to give him freedom in the United States and the Cuban government maintains Elian is being improperly kept from his
father.
Lawyers for the relatives in Miami filed a brief in federal court on Monday arguing the Immigration and Naturalization Service cannot return Elian to Cuba without holding a political asylum hearing.
U.S. government lawyers have moved to dismiss the Miami relatives' suit, arguing that they have no legal standing in the boy's case. The INS ruled last month that only Elian's father has the right to speak for the boy in immigration matters.
In his first letter earlier this month, Gonzalez pressed Reno to return the boy to him. He said that in the meantime, his son should be placed with Manolo Gonzalez, another great-uncle in Miami. Manolo has said he s the child's return to Cuba.
``I am deeply concerned and anguished over the present condition of my 6-year-old son, Elian Gonzalez, unfairly and cruelly separated from our family for over two months,'' the father wrote in his first letter. ``Elian has been under constant harassment and pressure from politicians,
journalists, lawyers, publicity agents and others unrelated to his family.''
AP-NY-02-16-00 1020EST
Copyright 2000 The Associated Press
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