MARK SILVA

 The plight of a 6-year-old Cuban boy has provided fiery political fodder for an
 American presidential campaign, as some Republican candidates accuse the
 Clinton administration of appeasing Fidel Castro with last week's decision to
 return Elian Gonzalez to his father in Cuba.

 Even Vice President Al Gore, seeking the Democratic nomination for president,
 has attempted to distance himself from the administration's stance on the
 custody struggle. American courts are the appropriate place to decide the boy's
 fate, Gore has maintained since last month and repeated last week.

 ``The Clinton administration looks like they may have done a deal with Fidel
 Castro on the young boy Gonzalez, Elian Gonzalez,'' Texas Gov. George W.
 Bush said during a nationally broadcast debate by the Republican candidates in
 New Hampshire on Thursday. There was no dispute about this among GOP
 ranks.

 The boy ``is Bill Clinton's human sacrifice to Fidel Castro, and it's a disgrace,''
 said millionaire publisher Steve Forbes, who previously aligned with Reform Party
 candidate Pat Buchanan in arguing that the ``dying wishes'' of the mother who
 attempted to deliver Elian to Florida should be honored.

 Among candidates for president this year, only Republican Sen. John McCain of
 Arizona broaches the idea of bargaining with Castro over an American trade
 embargo against the island nation. McCain says that if Castro could make some
 concessions -- emptying his jails of political prisoners and allowing freer conduct
 of business -- the United States could ease the embargo.

 MATTER OF SACRIFICE

 But on the question of Elian Gonzalez, says McCain, a former prisoner of war in
 Vietnam, there is no room for negotiation.

 ``The Statue of Liberty says, `Send me your poor, your sick, your tired, your
 huddled masses yearning to breathe free,' '' McCain said during the candidates'
 debate in Durham, N.H. ``That's what this Cuban boy is all about. His mother
 sacrificed her life in order that her son could have freedom.''

 From the start of a Thanksgiving Day saga when Elian was rescued alone at sea,
 Gore has maintained that -- if he were in charge in Washington -- the question of
 the boy's future would be left to an appropriate court of law.

 ``The ideal solution would still be to allow the father to come to free soil so he can
 express his true views, without fear of intimidation,'' Gore said in a statement
 issued by his campaign late last week.

 ``But in the absence of evidence that the father is expressing his own freely
 chosen thoughts and feelings, and in light of the disagreement within the family
 and the mother's heroic sacrifice in her dying wish for Elian's freedom,'' Gore said,
 ``the ultimate decision as to what is in this boy's best interest should be made on
 the basis of the rule of law according to due process -- not politics and not
 diplomacy. . . . The courts are in the best position to make this determination.''

 ROLE OF BOY'S FATHER

 Bush and others agree with Gore that the boy's father should come to the United
 States before his own views are weighed. ``Let him get a whiff of freedom and
 make the decision from the soil here,'' Bush said earlier in the campaign.

 Alan Keyes, a Maryland radio commentator and fiery orator in the Republican
 contest, says that the boy's ties to his father should be the foremost
 consideration -- but that the Immigration and Naturalization Service took measure
 of those ties without the unfettered testimony of the father.

 ``I respect the bonds and family ties and the obligations of family,'' Keyes said.
 ``We should not allow ideology or politics ever to trample upon those bonds. If this
 father has been a real father and wishes to have his child with him -- I'll tell you
 one thing, if somebody said for political reasons they were going to take one of
 my children and keep those children away from me, you can bet that those would
 be fighting words.''

 ``How do we know his decision was freely given?'' Keyes added. ``The INS was
 wrong to accept a decision that was taken under the control of Castro's tyranny.
 Until that father is allowed out of the country to make a free-will decision that all
 the world can see, that boy should stay in the U.S. He should stay in freedom
 until we are sure his father has decided in freedom.''

 THE CHILD'S INTEREST

 Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch offers the most plaintive argument about the boy's plight --
 including a plea to separate it from the campaign at hand.

 ``When it comes to this little Cuban boy, there is only one concern that everybody
 ought to have in their minds,'' Hatch said in New Hampshire, ``and that is what is
 in the best interest of that child. We have laws in this country that will basically
 take care of those interests.

 ``Fidel Castro ought to butt out, and our politicians in this country ought to butt
 out as well, and let's do what's best for this child.''

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald