MIAMI BEACH, Florida (Reuters) -- Former U.S. Attorney General
                 Janet Reno, whose decision to return Cuban shipwreck survivor
                 Elian Gonzalez to his father provoked the wrath of many
                 Cubans in Miami, said on Thursday she had no regrets about her
                 decision.

                 "The little boy belonged with his father," Reno told a Chambers of
                 Commerce meeting in Miami Beach when asked about the one-year
                 anniversary of Elian's return to communist-ruled Cuba after a bitter
                 custody battle.

                 Reno, a Democrat who is considering running for governor of Florida, said
                 she had thought about the child "in context of today" but had not had any contact
                 with him or his family since he returned to Cuba.

                 Asked by an audience member at the meeting if she would have returned him to
                 East Germany if his mother had died crossing the Berlin Wall to the West, she
                 said that would have depended in part on the regime in power.

                 Taking the example further, Reno, who was a keynote speaker at the meeting,
                 said, "I would not have returned him to Nazi Germany."

                 Reno, a Miami native who returned home when the Bush administration took
                 over in January, is respected by many residents who knew her as the state
                 attorney for Miami-Dade County. Many in the audience groaned in exasperation
                 when Reno was asked about Elian, but some Cubans in Miami still deplore her
                 role in the affair.

                 Elian, now 7, survived a disastrous migrant voyage in November 1999 that
                 killed his mother and 10 others. Reno's decision that the boy's father should
                 decide his future was challenged by Miami relatives who wanted to keep him in
                 the United States.

                 But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a year ago against the Miami relatives' bid for
                 Elian to be granted an asylum hearing that his father opposed. Two months
                 earlier, Reno had ordered federal agents to raid the Miami relatives' home in
                 Little Havana to get Elian and reunite him with his father.

                 Reno said her decision was based on interviews with Elian's family in Cuba,
                 which persuaded her Juan Miguel Gonzalez was a good and attentive father. She
                 said reports from U.S. relatives who had visited the family in Cuba had also
                 convinced her that "it did not seem a situation that would produce immediate
                 damage."

                 Outside the convention center where Reno spoke, a small knot of demonstrators
                 protested her decision in the case, carrying signs such as, "We love Elian, you
                 sent him to hell."

                 Reno said she felt "almost triumphant" that the protesters, many of whom
                 emigrated from Cuba, had the freedom to express their opinions publicly.

                 "I'm proud that they have a First Amendment right to protest," she said.

                   Copyright 2001 Reuters.