HAVANA -- (AP) -- Elian Gonzalez's father is pressing U.S. Attorney General
 Janet Reno to return the boy to him in Cuba, and says that in the meantime his
 son should be moved to the home of another relation in Miami.

 ``I am deeply concerned and anguished over the present condition of my
 6-year-old son, Elian Gonzalez, unfairly and cruelly separated from our family for
 over two months,'' Juan Miguel Gonzalez wrote in a letter sent to foreign news
 agencies early today by the government's International Press Center.

 The letter was dated Thursday and addressed to Reno and U.S. Immigration and
 Naturalization Service commissioner Doris Meissner. The INS ruled Jan. 5 that
 only the father has the right to speak for the boy and said Elian should be
 returned to him in Cuba.

 Both Reno and President Clinton backed that decision, but Elian's repatriation
 has been blocked by legal maneuvers of the child's Miami relatives.

 Elian has been at the center of an international custody battle since shortly after
 being rescued from an inner tube off the Florida coast on Nov. 25. The boy's
 mother and 10 other people died when the boat carrying them from Cuba to the
 United States sank.

 Elian is staying with his paternal great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez, who is fighting to
 keep the boy with him in the United States. The boy's father wants Elian to stay
 with Lazaro's brother Manolo, who has said he supports the child's return to his
 father in Cuba.

 ``Elian has been under constant harassment and pressure from politicians,
 journalists, lawyers, publicity agents and others unrelated to his family,''
 Gonzalez wrote in the letter.

 ``The boy has been forced to pose for TV cameras day and night with people he
 does not know and who are unscrupulously manipulating him,'' he wrote. ``That
 rude invasion of his privacy and disrespect for his childhood innocence should
 cease immediately and you should guarantee that such things do not happen
 again.''

 Gonzalez made his requests, ``as a father whose full and exclusive parental rights
 you have recognized.''

 In addition to returning the boy and moving him to Manolo Gonzalez's home until
 such repatriation takes place, Juan Miguel Gonzalez also demanded ``that an end
 be immediately put to harassment, manipulation, psychological pressures and
 the violation of my son Elian's privacy.''

 He also asked for the names and backgrounds of any and all psychologists who
 are reportedly caring for the boy, as well as any treatment and medications
 prescribed.

 Elian's mental health has been an insistent theme in Cuba, where a group of
 mental health experts gathered for a program on state television Thursday to
 express their concerns that his intellectual development had been blocked by an
 unstable home and school life in Miami.

 The Miami relatives have fought to block the earlier U.S. government ruling in favor
 of the father, and the U.S. immigration agency has agreed to let the final decision
 be made later this month by a federal judge in Miami.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald