BY JAY WEAVER AND ANDRES VIGLUCCI

 U.S. authorities late Monday repeated their threat to revoke Elian Gonzalez's
 immigration parole and send him back to Cuba quickly -- despite a ruling from
 an appeals court setting a May date for a hearing on his Miami relatives' bid to
 keep the boy here.

 A Justice Department official said the government will move to revoke Elian's
 temporary immigration parole on Thursday, in spite of the 11th Circuit Court
 of Appeals in Atlanta giving Elian's Miami relatives extra time to appeal a
 judge's order last week that cleared the way for the boy's return to Cuba.

 The official said the government is not legally bound to wait for the outcome
 of the appeal. Authorities will only delay his removal if the boy's relatives sign
 a pledge to turn over Elian within three days if they lose the appeal.

 Without parole, which allows Elian to stay in this country temporarily,
 the boy must be turned over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
 The fact that the appeals court has set a schedule has no effect on the
 government's stance.

 ''We are moving ahead with revocation of parole,'' the official said. ''We
 have never said we would be willing to wait out a full appeals process. We
 have set two deadlines, and they are not in compliance. We believe this is
 a very reasonable demand.''

 The official, who asked not to be identified, said a letter would be faxed to the
 Miami relatives' attorneys Monday night, but the lawyers said they had received
 nothing by 9 p.m.

 ''We don't expect they will revoke the parole,'' said attorney Spencer Eig. ''We
 believe we are in compliance and they haven't responded to us.''

 ''The court has spoken,'' added attorney Kendall Coffey. ''It no longer matters
 whether it's INS' opinion or our opinion. We expect both sides to respect the
 court.''

 The Herald obtained a faxed copy of the letter shortly after 10 p.m. Monday.

 The letter, written by senior INS official Michael Pearson, said immigration
 authorities have a set a meeting for this morning with the relatives' attorneys. The
 INS advised them to bring Elian's great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, to the meeting to
 discuss revoking the boy's parole and returning him to his father.

 The federal appellate court's decision seemed to be a small, but important, legal
 victory for the Miami family by setting the hearing for the week of May 8.

 At first glance, the decision by 11th Circuit Court of Appeals seemed to delay any
 government move to send the boy back to his father for another month and
 immediately eased what had been rising tensions surrounding the case. Scores
 of demonstrators in Little Havana had threatened to resist any federal effort to pick
 the boy up by forming a human chain outside his Miami relatives' home.

 But the mood changed again when word filtered back that the government was not
 going to back off from its threats in the face of the appellate court decision on the
 crucial hearing.

 ''If they move to revoke the parole there will be strong protests here, civil
 disobedience in vital parts of the city,'' said Ramon Saul Sanchez, leader of the
 Democracia Movement.

 The appellate court was responding to an emergency request filed only Monday
 morning by the relatives' legal team that sought more time for their appeal than
 government attorneys had been willing to grant them. The lawyers want the
 government to give a political asylum hearing to Elian, saying under federal law
 any alien of any age may apply for asylum.

 But last Tuesday, U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore ruled that U.S. Attorney
 Janet Reno had acted properly in finding that only Elian's father in Cuba could
 speak for the boy. Juan Miguel Gonzalez told the government that he did not want
 it to consider his son's asylum application, made on his behalf by his great-uncle
 in Miami.

 Ever since Moore's decision, federal officials and the relatives' legal team have
 been sparring over how fast an appeal should be filed and heard. The government
 threatened to revoke the boy's parole on Thursday if the team did not completely
 agree with the terms of the speedy appeals process.

 Earlier Monday, both sides seemed closer to a schedule that called for an
 appeals hearing the week of April 10. But the Gonzalez family's lawyers, upset
 with what they thought was the government's high-handedness, also filed the
 emergency request asking the appellate court to set its own timetable for the
 hearing.

 The motion annoyed Justice Department officials, but it paid off swiftly.

 Within hours, U.S. Circuit Judge Frank M. Hull had set the schedule: the relatives
 must file their initial brief by April 10. The government would respond by April 24,
 and the relatives would have until May 1 to reply. Oral arguments would be
 scheduled for the week of May 8.

 The government had proposed that both sides file initial briefs by next Monday,
 with responses due a week later, April 10. Oral arguments would have taken
 place that week.

 Legal sparring had been going on throughout the day Monday. A key sticking
 point was whether the family would pledge to turn Elian over to the INS quickly if
 they were to lose the appeal.

 In their response to the team's request to the appellate court, Justice Department
 officials said that it was ''unacceptable'' that the family and the legal team had not
 agreed to hand the boy over within three days if they fail to obtain a stay, or
 emergency order, from the Supreme Court blocking the government from sending
 Elian back.

 And if they obtain the injunction -- considered a long shot by independent legal
 experts -- the team would have to ask the Supreme Court within five days to
 consider accepting the case.

 If the lawyers did not comply with the government's demands, Reno threatened to
 revoke the temporary parole that has allowed Elian to stay in this country since
 he lost his mother on a boat journey from Cuba in late November.

 The government could then demand that Elian's great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez turn
 over the boy to authorities.

 ''What is truly at issue is Lazaro Gonzalez's refusal to execute an agreement
 that, should he not prevail in his appeal and not obtain an injunction pending any
 petition for [the Supreme Court], he will comply with the instructions of the
 Immigration and Naturalization Service,'' the government said in its filing to the
 appeals court.

 His lawyers called the government's pressure ''unconscionable.''

 Said attorney Linda Osberg-Braun. ''Lazaro Gonzalez has assured them he will
 obey the rule of law.''

 But the family's lawyers have not agreed that a Supreme Court rejection of their
 appeal means they must immediately surrender Elian to his father in Cuba.
 Without being specific, attorney Eig hinted that the team could go back to
 Miami-Dade's family court, where the Miami relatives have filed a separate
 custody petition.

 The family's lawyers, who called the government's tactics ''heavy-handed,'' told the
 appellate court in their emergency motion: ''Such threats could have tragic
 consequences. Indeed, Elian's threatened immediate removal from his present
 home to return him to Cuba will have the dual effect of irreparably harming him
 and depriving him of any genuine appellate review of the District Court's decision.''

 Herald staff writer Marika Lynch contributed to this report.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald