MIAMI (Reuters) - A U.S. Congressional Committee late on Friday subpoenaed the 6-year-old Cuban shipwreck survivor at the center of a highly political international custody battle, a move likely to temporarily thwart a U.S. government decision that he should go home to his father in Cuba.
Protests turned to celebrations in Miami as relatives and Cuban exiles cheered what they saw as a victory in their fight to keep the boy, Elian Gonzalez, in the United States.
Elian, clutching a copy of the subpoena, was paraded on his uncle's shoulders before a jubilant crowd outside the relatives' home in Miami's Little Havana district. Another crowd, gathered at a main intersection where protesters clashed with police on Thursday night, also celebrated as police in riot gear looked on.
"The family want to thank the whole community for what they have done," family spokesman Armando Guttierez said.
"This is the just the beginning. We got to keep fighting to keep Elian in the United States so he can have a better life and a better future."
The youngster's fate has inflamed passions in Cuba and among a Cuban emigre community in Miami that is bitterly opposed to President Fidel Castro's Communist government since he was rescued at sea on Nov 25. Elian was found clinging to an inner tube after a boat smuggling a group of Cubans into Florida had capsized, drowning Elian's mother and 10 others.
Relatives in Miami, backed by anti-Castro activists and conservative U.S. politicians, have demanded he stay in the United States to grow up "in freedom".
But U.S. immigration officials on Wednesday ruled that his father, a hotel worker in Cardenas who was divorced from his mother, Elisabet, was a fit parent and Elian should go back to him.
The subpoena, part of an escalating legal battle, was issued after a U.S. court said it would consider a petition filed on Friday by the Miami relatives asking for temporary custody of Elian.
Republican Congressman Dan Burton, a close ally of hard-line exiles and a shaper of the U.S. embargo on Cuba, filed the subpoena, saying he wanted to protect Elian from any attempt by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to deport Elian. It proposed a hearing date of Feb 10 -- nearly a month after the Jan. 14 date the INS set as target for resolving the case.
"We don't have a set date for a hearing ...that (Feb 10) is a projected date for a hearing," Burton told Miami's Channel 7 WSVN-TV station.
The move should buy time for the Miami relatives as they pursue the battle in the courts. Legal experts have said that international law favors the father as Elian's only surviving parent, regardless of Cuba's political and economic situation and the family may be deemed to have no right to act for him.
The INS said its decision was based on law and the subpoena did not change it.
Prominent exile leader Jose Basulto, said a campaign of protests planned by Cuban Americans should now be put on hold. Earlier on Friday, exile leaders announced they would step up street protests, including trying to blockade Miami's busy international airport on Monday.
Police arrested more than 100 protesters on Thursday and fired tear gas to clear crowds after a day of protests against the INS decision in which traffic was blocked in several parts of Miami. Elian has become a symbol of the tortured relationship between the island, ruled by Castro since his 1959 revolution, and Miami, just 100 miles away across the Florida Straits and home to a community of 800,000 Cubans, many of whom have fled communism.
Although opinion in Miami is divided on whether he should stay or go, local politicians have flocked to support the Miami relatives. A delegation including Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas and Miami City Mayor Joe Carollo flew to Washington on Friday night to meet with Attorney General Janet Reno in an effort to stymie the INS ruling.
Just how the INS intended to return Elian to Cuba was unclear and exile organizations have pledged to physically block any effort, raising the prospect of ugly scenes.
At his home in Cardenas, Cuba, Juan Miguel Gonzalez said on Friday he had no plans to travel to the United States to collect his son, as the Miami relatives with whom Elian has been staying have challenged him to.
"At no time have I thought about going to the United States, neither tomorrow or any of these days," Gonzalez told Reuters at the start of a big government-organized demonstration there calling for the return of his son.
"I would like to see him here in Cardenas wrapped in the Cuban flag," Gonzalez, a hotel worker, said. Well over 50,000 people, most of them schoolchildren and young people, took part in the rally in Cardenas, a port town about 85 miles east of Havana, where Elian had been living before his shipwreck drama.
Castro's government has staged protests around the country since early December.
The dispute has thrust new tensions in the difficult relations between old foes Cuba and the United States.
President Clinton on Friday told opponents of the decision they should file a court challenge and not break the law as protesters did, saying "This is a volatile and difficult case."