By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

           WASHINGTON -- With tears streaming down her face and a pink and
          blue bag of Easter goodies in her hand, the cousin who acted as a surrogate mother to
          Elian Gonzalez in recent months pleaded to see the 6-year-old on Sunday.

          Marisleysis Gonzalez accused Attorney General Janet Reno and President Clinton of
          causing the young shipwreck survivor irreparable psychological harm by ordering
          armed federal agents to seize him from her family's Miami home the day before.

          She held a copy of an Associated Press photo -- marked "Federal Child Abuse" --
          showing an agent taking the boy from a fisherman who rescued him from the sea.
          Gonzalez pointed to the agent's gun.

          "Janet Reno said he had a little baggie of toys (on the plane to
          Washington). Was this (gun) the first toy you gave him?" she said. "There
          was no need for this. There was no need for my family to have guns
          (used) against them. There was no need for Elian's fear."

          Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., who was helping the Miami relatives of the boy
          in Washington, accused the Clinton administration of surrendering the
          boy to his Cuban father to appease communist dictator Fidel Castro.

          "There was no hesitation on the part of this administration to sacrifice
          innocent lives to achieve their own agenda, and the agenda this time was
          diplomatic relations with Fidel Castro, so Elian was expendable," Smith
          said during the news conference on Capitol Hill. "I'm ashamed of my
          government."

          The senator, who had tears in his eyes as he held a bright pink Easter egg
          intended for Elian, called for congressional hearings and an investigation.

          "This is no longer about Castro," Smith said. "It is now about President
          Clinton and Janet Reno's abuse of power."

          For the second straight day, Smith and the Gonzalez family, including
          great uncle Lazaro Gonzalez, were turned away from Andrews Air Force
          Base, where the boy was in seclusion with his father, Juan Miguel
          Gonzalez. The cousin, Marisleysis, said she wanted to give the boy a bag
          with Easter gifts, including a bunny toy, candies, the pink Easter egg that
          "we were supposed to find today in my backyard," and other items that
          "any other kid would get for Easter,"

          "Let me see this boy," she demanded. "I know this boy needs to see me,
          too."

          But she left the gates of the base without seeing him, and there was no
          evidence the guards accepted any gifts for the child. She said she and her
          family would remain in Washington until they get to see Elian.

          In the afternoon, they visited the Basilica of the National Shrine of the
          Immaculate Conception at Catholic University, where they lit a candle. A
          family spokesman described the visit as a "moment of reflection, a
          moment of prayer for Elian."

          At the news conference earlier in the day, Marisleysis Gonzalez
          described the raid on her home, saying agents burst in unannounced,
          used foul language, threatened her and her family's lives, threw people to
          the floor, and "trashed" the home.

          "All they said was 'Give me the damn boy! Give me the damn boy!' And
          all I said was, 'Please! I'll give you the boy. Please!' I begged them. I
          stood in front of all those machine guns and I begged. 'I beg you,' I said,
          'Please don't do this to this boy. There's kids in this house. Don't do this,
          but please don't let them see this.' They didn't care."

          Gonzalez said two young cousins of Elian also were traumatized by the
          raid.

          "Why is there a need to have a 5-year-old, a 6-year-old, and an
          11-year-old pointed at with a gun, 'Don't  move or I'm going to shoot you!' she
          cried. "We didn't want bloodshed. We didn't want Elian to see more than he had
          seen already. And I want to tell the American people, this could happen to
          your kid, too."

          Fisherman Donato Dalrymple, who held the boy in the now-famous
          photograph, said he was "heartbroken, as an American."

          "We brought him to these shores for freedom, but yet he was pulled out
          of my arms, an American, by foot soldiers with assault rifles," he said.

          Practically spitting out the words, Gonzalez said the president lacks the
          moral authority to denounce violence in schools.

          "Why stand up on TV and say we need to make better about the crimes
          that are being done in school when you're the first one to give an order to
          break inside a house and (have) a kid with a gun in his face?" she asked
          of Clinton. "It's not only the criminals and people outside with guns. Now
          it's the government, too."