By Sue Anne Pressley
                  Washington Post Staff Writer
                  Friday, March 10, 2000; Page A02

                  MIAMI, March 9—For the first time, 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez had his
                  day in federal court today, as lawyers for his Miami relatives argued that
                  the boy is entitled to a political asylum hearing and federal government
                  lawyers argued that the case is an administrative matter that does not
                  belong in court.

                  U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore did not issue a ruling, recessing
                  after three hours of largely technical arguments without indicating when he
                  will decide whether his court has jurisdiction over the case. He can choose
                  either to intervene and order a full political asylum hearing, or to let stand
                  the decision by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) that the
                  boy belongs with his father in Cuba.

                  Afterward, attorneys for both sides said in news conferences that they
                  were encouraged by the proceedings.

                  "It is our hope that the court's resolution will make it possible for this little
                  boy to go home," said Patricia Maher, a deputy assistant U.S. attorney
                  general.

                  The government's argument is based on the January INS decision that only
                  the boy's father in Cuba, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, can speak for him and file
                  a political asylum petition on his behalf. Both the father and Cuban leader
                  Fidel Castro have demanded Elian's return to Cuba.

                  Attorneys representing Lazaro Gonzalez, the Miami great-uncle who took
                  Elian in after his rescue at sea in November, countered that the child has
                  the right, accorded any arriving alien under the U.S. Immigration Act, to
                  apply for asylum regardless of his age.

                  "Any alien physically here has the right to apply for asylum and the INS is
                  obligated to hear that claim," attorney Linda Osberg-Braun told the court.
                  "They have refused to do this where Elian Gonzalez is concerned. It's
                  clearly obligatory. It's not discretionary."

                  Some of Moore's questions during the proceedings indicated an
                  understanding of, if not an agreement with, their argument. "Where does it
                  say in the statutes that [an asylum petitioner] can't be under six?" Moore
                  asked deputy U.S. solicitor general Edwin S. Kneedler.

                  Moore also asked the government attorneys why the INS did not send the
                  boy directly back to his father instead of turning him over to Lazaro
                  Gonzalez.

                  "You didn't put him in the custody of his father," Moore said.

                  Kneedler explained that Attorney General Janet Reno still retains custody
                  of the child, but that, traumatized after his two-day ordeal at sea, the boy
                  was put in the care of the Miami relatives who showed up at the local
                  hospital to claim him.

                  "This emergency arrangement did not affect the agency's legal authority,"
                  Kneedler said, or Juan Miguel Gonzalez's authority.

                  Elian's fate has been in limbo since Thanksgiving, when he was discovered
                  floating in an inner tube off South Florida, one of three survivors of a
                  shipwreck in which his mother and nine others died as they tried to enter
                  the United States. Since then, an international custody battle has spawned
                  mass demonstrations in Miami and Cuba, and become a political flash
                  point. In recent weeks, the case had taken a rare low profile as both sides
                  agreed to wait for the court's ruling.

                  An INS order to send the boy back to Cuba, supported by Reno and
                  President Clinton, has been in place since January, but INS officials have
                  held off enforcing it.

                  Elian was at school today and was not present in court. Lazaro Gonzalez
                  and other Miami relatives occupied a front row of the courtroom, while
                  outside about 50 demonstrators, most of them supporting Elian's stay in the
                  United States, waved Cuban and American flags and snarled downtown
                  traffic.

                  Staff writer Gene Weingarten contributed to this report.

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