Section B·Page 8
The University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, December 7, 1999
Nation/World
Cuban boy's birthday party turns political
The Associated Press
HAVANA — President Fidel Castro made a surprise appearance yesterday at a 6th birthday party for Elian Gonzalez, continuing his campaign for the boy to be returned to his father in Cuba.
Elian's elementary school classmates organized the party for Elian in his absence. The boy, who was rescued off the Florida coast nearly two weeks ago, has become a political poster child for Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits.
A midday news broadcast on government television showed the boy's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, 31, and other relatives in Cardenas, wishing Elian a happy birthday on the telephone.
"I sent you lot of little kisses so you have a happy birthday," Gonzalez told Elian after he and the boy's four grandparents, best friend and teacher sang him a Cuban birthday song into the speaker phone.
"Are you coming back soon?" the father asked.
"It isn't the boy's fault that his mother wanted to take him to the United States," a teen-age girl told local TV reporters after students held a protest of their own in Cardenas. "That poor child must be traumatized."
Castro on Sunday demanded that Elian be returned to his father in 72 hours — by tonight. The State Department rejected the demand on Monday, saying the fate of the child should be based on humanitarian considerations.
"The main thing is the child," said Vicki Huddleston, chief of the American mission, in brief comments to reporters thronged outside the U.S. Interests Section. "I have two children, and as a mother you want to see the best for the child."
National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon appealed in a letter to governments around the world for their support in bringing Elian home.
"Once again, the United States government has violated the basic principles of law and respect for human dignity thus insulting the child's father, a modest Cuban worker, and his grandparents," Alarcon wrote.
Castro accused the U.S. government of kidnapping Elian, who was found Nov. 25 clinging to an inner tube off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Eilan's mother and stepfather were among those who died when an overloaded powerboat sank Thanksgiving week during the 90-mile crossing to Florida in what American authorities said was a case of illegal alien smuggling.
The boy's father says the child was taken out of the country without his knowledge. He and the boy's four grandparents have asked the Cuban
government to help get him back.
The U.S. government has released the boy to his great-aunt and great-uncle in Miami, and they have petitioned the Florida state courts for permanent custody.
U. S. legal experts said what may have to be resolved are two conflicting principles — the child's custody, which in most cases is granted to the surviving biological parent, and his immigration status. A 1966 law grants any Cuban who reaches American soil the right to stay.
The conflict comes one week before U.S.—Cuba migration talks in Havana. Under current agreements, the U.S. government is to stop accepting Cubans picked up at sea. In turn, Cuba is to prevent illegal departures, following the 1994 summer exodus of tens of thousands of Florida-bound rafters.
Alarcon has indicated that Cuba would raise the dispute about Elian during the Dec. 13 meeting.
Israeli settlements reignite tensions in Jerusalem
Albright to visit area discuss long-term peace
The Associated Press
JERUSALEM — On the eve of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's arrival, a bitter confrontation erupted yesterday between Israel and the Palestinians about Jewish settlements, derailing month-old talks aimed at sealing a final peace between the sides.
The dispute appeared all but certain to embroil Albright, who intends to use her visit to the region to reaffirm U.S. support for the peace process, but had hoped to avoid acting as a referee in the tangle of quarrels between Israel and the Palestinians.
Spotlighting one of the most intractable of those disagreements, the Palestinians announced yesterday that they no longer would participate in negotiations aimed at setting terms of their hoped-for statehood — so-called final status talks — unless Prime Minister Ehud Barak halts a burst of new construction of Jewish housing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"It is illogical to hold final status talks, while at the same time Israel is continuing its settlement-building. This is unacceptable," senior Palestinian negotiator Yasser Abed Rabbo told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah after a three-hour session with his Israeli counterpart.
The final status negotiations, launched with fanfare on Nov. 8, are meant to reach the broad outlines of an
Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty by mid-February. On the table are the most contentious issues dividing the two sides: the borders of a future Palestinian state, the status of Jerusalem and the fates of Palestinian refugees and Jewish settlements.
Abed Rabbo stopped short of suspending the talks outright, but said until Barak agreed to a freeze on settlement activity, settlements would be the only matter the Palestinians were willing to discuss. No date has been set for another session.
Barak's administration said it could not legally halt settlement building that was set in motion by previous governments, but that any other new construction would be concentrated in settlement blocs that Israel plans to retain.
issue of the settlements will not become an obstacle to the continuation of the negotiations," said Danny Yatom, the prime minister's security adviser.
"We will find a way to see to it that the
But even as they tried to ease Palestinian anger about the settlement issue, Barak associates criticized the timing of the demand for a building freeze.
"I am sorry that the Palestinians are always creating a crisis when Secretary Albright visits the area," said Cabinet minister Haim Ramon, whose portfolio is Jerusalem affairs.
Palestinians have long sought greater U.S. involvement in the negotiating process, while Israel generally has resisted it. However, the Palestinians denied the confrontation was being staged to coincide with Albright's arrival, scheduled late today.
Clinton condemns human rights abuses by Chinese, Russians
The Associated Press
The president also condemned A
abliefness of women and girls.
WASHINGTON—President Clinton, in a human rights speech yesterday, criticized China's crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement and said that Russia would pay a heavy price if it carried out its threatened destruction of the Chechen capital of Grozny.
the repression of women and girls.
He said the United States would spend at least $2 million next year in education and the improvement of the health of Afghan women and children refugees in Pakistan and would make $1.5 million available in emergency aid for those displaced by the Taliban's recent offensive.
Joined by his wife, Hillary, the president marked the 51st anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the United Nations General Assembly adopted at the urging of
Clinton: Criticized China for crack-down on Falun Gong
Eleanor Roosevelt to assert that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
Thousands of Falun Gong followers reportedly have been detained since the government banned the group four months ago as a threat to its rule. Adherents say Falun Gong, which draws on ideas from Buddhism, Taismon and China's traditional practice of slow-motion exercises and meditation, promotes health and morality.
Mike Hammer, National Security Council spokesman, said the administration had criticized China's actions against the Falun Gong, but yesterday's speech represented Clinton's first direct remarks.
Clinton also used the occasion to express alarm about the plight of innocent civilians in the Chechen region of Russia, under siege from Russian artillery and bombs. Russian planes dropped leaflets yesterday warning residents of Grozny and rebels to flee by Saturday or risk a massive attack by federal forces that would smash the capital into submission.
"Russia has set a deadline for all inhabitants now to leave Grozny or face the consequences," Clinton said. "Russia will pay a heavy price for those actions, with each passing day, sinking more deeply into a morass that will intensify extremism and diminish its own standing in the world."
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