THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

 MIAMI - Elian Gonzalez said today he remembers how the boat bringing him and
 his mother from Cuba sank, but suggested he doesn't believe his mother is really dead.

 The report was televised the same day that the boy's Miami relatives met a Justice
 Department deadline and filed a motion for an expedited appeals process.

 ''We just received motion to set the briefing schedule and to set oral arguments,'' said
 Robert Phelps, chief deptury clerk of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
 ''They want this to be set as quickly as possible and there are to be no undue delays.''

 Attorneys representing the boy's Miami relatives filed the motion at about 9:10 a.m.
 EST and a ruling could come as early as this week, Phelps said.

 In the interview broadcast today on ABC's ''Good Morning America,'' Elian said he
 remembers his mother placing him on an inner tube and that he fell asleep.
 Fishermen later found him lashed to the inner tube floating off the Florida coast,
 but his mother and 10 others died when their boat sank.

 Elian, speaking through interpreters, didn't agree with all of that account.

 ''My mother is not in heaven, not lost,'' he said through his cousin Marisleysis
 Gonzalez, who is raising him in Miami and is among those fighting to keep him
 here. ''She must have been picked up here Miami somewhere. She must have lost
 her memory, and just doesn't know I'm here.'' She reminded him that he knows
 what really happened to his mother, and he continued gazing downward.

 In an apparent bid to increase American support for their battle to keep Elian, the
 Miami relatives last week allowed ABC's Diane Sawyer to spend two days with
 the boy. Elian's father, in Cuba, is fighting for the boy's return.

 In the interview, conducted last week at the private school Elian attends, the boy
 drew crayon pictures of the voyage from Cuba.

 He first drew a wavy line representing waves, then a leaping dolphin - he has told
 people that dolphins kept him safe, keeping away sharks and boosting him up
 when he slipped down into the water - then himself as a stick figure in an inner
 tube.

 Then he drew a boat, with people inside. He told of the boat having engine trouble
 and slowly sinking, and of attempts to bail it out.

 Asked what happened to the boat, he said softly: ''Water came in.''

 He drew the waves higher and higher, covering the boat.

 The U.S. Justice Department late Friday told Elian's Miami relatives that they had
 until noon Monday to agree to an expedited appeal or the boy would be returned
 rapidly to his father in Cuba, according to family spokesman Armando Gutierrez.

 In Washington, a federal official close to the case confirmed that the Justice
 Department plans to give the family's lawyers until April 3 to prepare and file their
 appeal.

 In a speech Sunday in Havana, Cuban President Fidel Castro said subjecting
 Elian to the interview was ''monstrous and sickening.''

 ''You cannot do this without the authorization of the father,'' said Castro. ''I
 sincerely think that this boy is at risk in the hands of desperate people and the
 government of the United States should not be running this risk.''

 Castro confidently declared that Elian's Miami relatives had run out of legal
 challenges.

 But he warned that, rather than allow the boy's return, Elian's Miami supporters,
 Cuban-American exiles, might kill the child or take him to a third country.

 ''They are capable of killing him rather than returning him safe and sound to the
 country,'' Castro said as he wrapped up a one-hour speech.

 He spoke before more than 700 university students, saying ''the Cuban mafia''
 could expose the boy to a serious illness in an act of vengeance against Elian's
 father or the Cuban government, both of which have battled for Elian's repatriation.
 He also said that according to ''reliable sources in Miami,'' the child's ''kidnappers''
 had discussed moving him to another location or even a third country to prevent
 his return to Cuba.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald