Agence France-Presse

 Three leading U.S. newspapers on Sunday gave mixed reactions to the government raid to seize
 Elian Gonzalez from his Miami relatives and reunite him with his father.

 ''The government did the right thing, cleanly and well, yesterday in seizing Elian Gonzalez and
 restoring him to his father,'' The Washington Post wrote.

 The paper said that ''the government raid was swift, deft and solicitous as regards the boy, and
 it was the relatives who provoked it.''

 The Post also assailed Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush -- the
 Democratic and Republican presidential front-runners -- who opposed the use of force.

 ''Two champions of family values flee responsibility in pursuit of votes,'' The Post
 charged.

 However, The New York Times called the operation ''precipitous.''

 ''The sight of heavily armed federal agents breaking into Lazaro Gonzalez's Miami home . . .
 is likely to haunt the country for years to come,'' opined The Times.

 The Times argued that Attorney General Janet Reno ''should have given the two branches of the
 Gonzalez family more time to try to resolve the case amicably, and she should have applied
 more legal pressure on the Miami relatives before battering down their door to remove Elian.''

 The Los Angeles Times had cautious praise:

 ''Reno made a hard decision and made it stick. Elian is where he should be -- in his father's
 arms,'' The Times said.

 ''To say there should have been an easier solution is to ignore the political fever that
 leaders of the Cuban-American community in Miami had fueled around the issue,'' it said.

 ''No matter how fervently Miami's Cuban Americans wave the photo of the armed and
 armored marshal, other images will supersede it. A photo shot later in the day shows a smiling
 Elian embracing his dad, a far cry from the traumatic scenes in Little Havana before dawn.''

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald