MIAMI, DECEMBER 16: A Miami cousin fighting with her family for custody of a 6-year-old Cuban castaway wrote a letter to Hillary Rodham Clinton, urging her to use her clout as first lady to help the boy stay in Miami rather than return to his father in Cuba.``We beg you now as a mother, to be the first lady that truly crosses all ethnic barriers and speaks out for the children. Please, please help,'' Marisleysis Gonzalez yesterday wrote in a letter addressed to ``Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton'' at the White House.Gonzalez is a first cousin of Elian Gonzalez, the boy plucked from the sea on November 25 after a boat carrying illegal Cuban immigrants sank off Florida's Atlantic coast. The child's mother and 10 other people drowned.Elian's father, who was divorced from the mother, wants him sent home to Cuba. Marisleysis Gonzalez and other relatives in Miami say he should stay in the United States rather than grow up under Communism.US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) officials have met withthe boy's father in Cuba and will decide his fate.``The next step will be determined by INS using all the information available on this case to date. It is impossible to predict a time frame or the final outcome of this case,'' INS spokesman Dan Kane said in Washington yesterday.Elian's case has raised hackles on both sides of the bitter ideological divide between Cuba and exile enemies of President Fidel Castro.President Bill Clinton has said he does not want politics to interfere with the custody decision. Cuban exiles in Miami slipped him a note from Elian's cousins during a Miami fund-raising stop last week, asking him to meet with the boy, but the President has not responded publicly to the note.Gonzalez said in her letter to Hillary Clinton that ``We asked your husband to step in and consider Elian's fate'' but that they were still waiting.
