From staff and wire reports

                  MIAMI -- U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno is considering a request to
                  meet with Miami relatives of 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez in Washington,
                  according to a Justice Department spokesman.

                  The request came Friday. The same day, according to a Miami Beach
                  Police Department source quoted anonymously by The Associated Press,
                  Elian's Miami relatives filed a complaint with police about a recent meeting
                  between Elian and his Cuban grandmothers.

                  The relatives were said to be outraged after one of the grandmothers
                  described playfully biting the boy's tongue and unzipping his pants during the
                  reunion.

                  Armando Gutierrez, a spokesman for the Miami relatives, would not confirm
                  that the complaint was filed.

                  The relatives' request for a meeting with Reno was made through U.S. Sen.
                  Bob Smith, R-New Hampshire. Smith wrote a letter to Reno saying the boy's
                  great uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, and second cousins Marisleysis Gonzalez and
                  Georgina Cid Gonzalez were planning a trip to Washington on Wednesday and
                  Thursday and would "have new information to share with you."

                  The letter did not specify what the "new information" was.

                  If Reno does agree to the meeting, it is likely to take place at midweek, the
                  Justice Department spokesman said.

                  Elian takes a weekend trip

                  Elian played outside of his relatives' home Saturday before leaving for the
                  weekend with his relatives to an undisclosed location.

                  The boy has been staying with his Miami relatives since he was found
                  clinging to an inner tube off the Florida coast November 25, one of three
                  survivors from a shipwrecked immigration attempt that left his mother and 10
                  other people dead.

                  The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has ordered Elian to be
                  returned to his father, who lives in Cuba. Reno has supported that ruling.

                  After the INS decision, a Florida family court judge gave Elian's Miami
                  relatives temporary custody of the boy pending a full custody hearing next
                  month.

                  If Elian's Miami relatives do meet with Reno, it will be their first face-to-face
                  meeting with the attorney general since the international custody battle
                  began.

                  Father writes to Reno

                  The meeting request follows the receipt of a letter that Elian's father sent to
                  Reno this week. The letter says Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, is
                  deeply concerned about his son's well-being, according to INS
                  Commissioner Doris Meisner.

                  Gonzalez's letter reiterates his demand that Elian be returned to him in Cuba.
                  But in the meantime, the letter says the boy should be moved to the house of
                  another great uncle in Miami, who is on good terms with Elian's family in
                  Cuba.

                   Another legal entanglement?

                   Meanwhile, the reported Miami police complaint about Elian's meeting with
                   his grandmothers could spark more legal wrangling.

                  "There was a report filed, and there is going to be an investigation made into
                  the complaint made on that report," the Miami Beach Police source told
                  The Associated Press.

                  In an interview on Cuban television Tuesday, Elian's paternal grandmother,
                  Mariela Quintana, said she had "played jokes" with the boy during a U.S.
                  government-ordered meeting January 26 at the home of a Roman Catholic
                  nun in Florida.

                  "I even opened up his zipper," she said. "I told him, 'Let me see, let me see
                  ... if it has grown.'"

                  Uva de Aragon, of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International
                  University, said Quintana's behavior might seem odd to people in the United
                  States, but that it probably was innocent.

                  "The way the woman said it on national television shows it wasn't something
                  perverted," de Aragon said. "She was joking with a little kid, trying to get
                  him to respond, the same as if she were tickling him or trying to see his
                  muscles."

                  She said in the Cuban culture, fathers, particularly in lower classes, often
                  boast about the size of their sons' genitals, associating that with bravery and
                  virility.

                        Havana Bureau Chief Lucia Newman and The
                        Associated Press contributed to this report.