ANDRES VIGLUCCI AND JAY WEAVER

 A federal judge in Miami on Tuesday firmly upheld U.S. Attorney General
 Janet Reno's authority to decide Elian Gonzalez's fate, clearing the legal path
 for immigration officials to return the boy to his father in Cuba.

 Attorneys for Elian's Miami relatives, who are fighting to keep the boy here,
 quickly filed a legal notice of their intention to appeal the ruling by U.S.
 District Judge K. Michael Moore. The lawyers said they hope the notice
 will dissuade the Immigration and Naturalization Service from moving to
 send Elian home while they prepare their appeal, though the agency is
 legally free to do so.

 Lawyers for the two sides are expected to discuss today how they might
 proceed.

 Reno, at a mid-day news conference in Washington, welcomed Moore's
 decision but gave no indication of any impending action by the INS, which
 she oversees.

 ''It has been four months since Elian was separated from his father and lost
 his mother,'' Reno said. ''It is time for this little boy, who has been through
 so much, to move on with his life at his father's side.

 ''I have every confidence that the community will accept the court's decision
 and will support the process that will reunite Elian and his father.''

 Legal experts, including the Miami relatives' lawyers, say the INS now has
 two options: It can simply wait out the appeal, a process that could take
 several months. Or it can revoke the temporary parole granted to Elian
 and demand that his relatives turn him over to the agency for the trip back
 to Cuba.

 ''We're hoping they respect Elian's right to appeal, just as they allowed his
 [temporary] parole to stay in effect during the district court case,'' said legal
 team member Kendall Coffey.

 Reaction to Moore's decision was muted on both sides of the Florida Straits.
 Both the Cuban government and exile leaders in Miami cautioned followers to
 await the outcome of the legal maneuvers, which now seem bound for the 11th
 Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

 ''I want to thank you all for your support and let you know that we will
 overcome this,'' the boy's great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, told a small crowd
 of supporters outside his Little Havana home. ''This is the land of liberty.''

 But Moore's closely reasoned ruling appears to deal a crippling, if not fatal,
 blow to the Miami relatives' legal efforts to keep Elian here. In a 50-page
 decision, he dismissed a lawsuit filed on Elian's behalf by Lazaro Gonzalez
 that sought to force the INS to grant the boy an asylum hearing.

 Moore called the lawsuit ''well intentioned,'' but concluded that Reno acted
 entirely within her broad powers in determining that only the boy's father, Juan
 Miguel Gonzalez, can legally speak for the boy in immigration matters. Elian's
 father has consistently said he wants Elian returned to him.

 SMALL VICTORY

 Moore gave the relatives a small victory, ruling that Elian and his great-uncle had
 the right to sue the government on the 6-year-old's behalf. But the judge
 concluded that they failed to show that the INS had violated the boy's
 due-process rights when it kicked back two asylum applications filed on his
 behalf.

 Moore ruled that he has limited jurisdiction to intervene in the case -- only to the
 extent of deciding whether Reno had abused her discretionary powers. But he
 said that those powers gave Reno ample authority to act as she did.

 His decision ended with an unusual plea: ''Even this well intentioned litigation has
 the capacity to bring about unintended harm,'' Moore wrote. ''In light of the
 Attorney General's clearly articulated views on the matter of whether Elian
 Gonzalez should return home, as well as the reality that each passing day is
 another day lost between Juan Gonzalez and his son, the Court can only hope
 that those on each side of this litigation place the interests of Elian Gonzalez
 above all others.''

 APPEAL'S CHANCES

 The judge's decision appears to leave little room for a successful appeal, several
 independent experts said.

 Moore's ruling relies heavily on previous decisions by the 11th Circuit Court of
 Appeals in Atlanta, which would handle the relatives' appeal. That court has
 consistently upheld the near-absolute legal discretion granted to the INS by
 Congress to decide certain immigration matters without judicial second-guessing.

 ''On the merits, the INS is on very, very strong ground,'' said Yale Law School
 professor Peter Schuck. ''The statute grants very broad powers to the attorney
 general.''

 The narrowing of the Miami relatives legal avenues may yet prompt a renewed
 push to resolve his fate politically.

 U.S. Rep. Bill McCollum, R-Fla., said Tuesday he would attempt to revive a
 stalled proposal in Congress to grant Elian U.S. citizenship or legal residency, a
 move that would remove the case from the INS' purview. The question of the boy's
 custody would then be left to a state court to decide. A custody petition filed in
 Miami-Dade family court by Lazaro Gonzalez has been in abeyance pending the
 outcome of the federal litigation.

 CANDIDATES' VIEWS

 On the presidential campaign trail, where Elian has been a recurrent issue, both
 front-runners, Democratic Vice President Al Gore and Republican Texas Gov.
 George W. Bush, reiterated calls for the boy's custody to be settled in family
 court.

 ''I urge Attorney General Janet Reno to reconsider her plans to send Elian back to
 Cuba, back to the place his mother died trying to escape,'' Bush said. ''This case
 should be decided by a Florida family court, which will protect the best interests
 of Elian, not by a Clinton-Gore Justice Department whose record of putting
 politics ahead of the law does not inspire confidence.''

 During a campaign stop in New York, Gore, who has departed from the Clinton
 administration's stance on the matter, questioned whether Elian's father's
 insistent demands for the boy's return reflect his true wishes.

 ''The father is not free to speak his true mind. What is his true feeling?'' Gore said.
 ''The child should never have been put in a position where the choice is his
 freedom or his father. The real fault here lies with Fidel Castro.''

 INS RESOLVE

 Moore's decision, at the same time, has revived questions over the INS' resolve to
 actually carry out a decision sure to be unpopular with Cuban exiles, who
 previously blocked roads and highways in Miami when Reno announced her
 decision to return Elian in January.

 ''The question is, how ready will the INS be to fetch Elian and send him home?''
 University of Miami Law School professor David Abraham asked. ''We have to
 hope that the people of South Florida will live under the rule of law.''

 No protests seemed in the offing Tuesday evening, although some exile opinion
 leaders spoke out defiantly. On some Spanish-language radio stations, callers
 denounced the judge's decision and vowed to express their discontent with the
 Clinton-Gore administration at the voting booths this November.

 ''We must punish the enemy with our votes,'' said Armando Perez-Roura, an
 influential commentator on WAQI-AM Radio Mambi.

 One protest leader, Jose Basulto, president of Brothers to the Rescue, said
 various exile community groups plan to meet this morning to plan a course of
 action.

 SOME SEEM RESIGNED

 Some advocates of Elian's remaining in Miami, however, seemed resigned.

 ''We accept laws and decisions even if they cause heartache,'' said Sister Jeanne
 O'Laughlin, the Barry University president who spoke out against Elian's return
 after hosting a controversial meeting between the boy and his grandmothers at
 her Miami Beach home.

 ''The only thing we can do as a people is pray together for the future of the child --
 that whatever the environment the child is in, he will grow to be the man that his
 mother wanted him to be.''

 Elian spent the afternoon at a relative's house to avoid the crowd that gathered at
 his great uncle's Little Havana home. He went to school, but left early at about
 1:10 p.m. in a car with his great-uncle Delfin Gonzalez and school owner
 Demetrio Perez.

 Armando Gutierrez, the family spokesman, says Elian overheard a conversation
 about the judge's decision and looked ''a little bit sad.''

 ''Elian is like a sponge,'' Gutierrez said. ''I believe he understands everything.''

 The attorneys for the boy's Miami relatives were clearly banking on the INS'
 willingness to let their legal challenge run its course before acting to send Elian
 back. Coffey would not say how soon they will appeal. The appellate court could
 expedite the procedure and render a decision in less than two months, he said.

 Some supporters were publicly hoping the appeal would stall Elian's return long
 enough for him to qualify for protection under the Cuban Adjustment Act, which
 grants Cubans the right to apply for legal status a year after arriving on U.S. soil.
 But some legal experts cautioned that Elian may not be eligible under the act,
 noting that legal status is granted only at INS discretion.

 Herald staff writers Ana Acle, Karen Branch, Alfonso Chardy, Elaine de Valle,
 Mireidy Fernandez and Joseph Tanfani, and staff translator Renato Perez
 contributed to this report, which was supplemented by Herald wire services.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald