US honors 114 agents in Elian raid

quot;You not only did the right thing, you did it extraordinarily well,quot; Meissner said. quot;The objective of the operation was to remove Elian safely from the home of his great uncle and reunite him with his father. That was accomplished.quot;

The Federal raid on the modest Miami home of Elian8217;s great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez provided a spectacular climax to a tense stand-off between Cuban exiles and Washington over the fate of the 6-year-old boy who survived a disastrous migrant smuggling voyage in which his mother and 10 others died.

Elian was rescued off the Florida coast last November 25 after surviving two days at sea alone on an inner tube.

He immediately became the focus of a highly politicised custody battle between his father, who wanted him returned to Communist Cuba, and Miami exiles opposed to Cuban President Fidel Castro who said the boy should be allowed to grow up quot;in freedomquot; in the United States.