BY ELAINE DE VALLE

 A week after the much-publicized visit between Elian Gonzalez and his two
 grandmothers, the women said in an interview with Cuban television that they
 were tempted to grab the boy in Miami and not let him go.

 But, they said, they had to respect the agreements they had made.

 ``Weren't you tempted to grab your grandson and not let them take him?''
 journalist Arleen Rodriguez Derivet asked.

 Mariela Quintana, Elian's paternal grandmother, admitted the thought crossed
 their minds. ``We knew that we couldn't do it, we had to follow the rules, and
 at no time did we not follow them,'' she said. Quintana returned Sunday to Cuba
 along with Raquel Rodriguez, the boy's maternal grandmother.

 Quintana added that their goal was to ``see the boy, be with him, but never to
 break the law.''

 Other details from the 90-minute meeting revealed Wednesday shocked and
 angered his Miami relatives, said family spokesman Armando Gutierrez.

 He referred to a particular comment by Quintana.

 Quintana said in the interview that she did some ``mischievous things'' so that
 Elian would talk.

 She wanted to see ``if he had no little tongue,'' she said. ``I took it out of his
 mouth, I bit it.'' Then she asked to see his private parts, presumably to see how
 much he had grown.

 ``If you want to see how he's grown, you measure him. You don't go inside his
 pants,'' Gutierrez said.

 ``I am so surprised by this. So much hassle to see their grandson, and instead of
 kissing him and hugging him they are biting his tongue and taking his thing out?

 ``It's left me dumbstruck.''

 He said he didn't believe that they were trying to determine the boy's growth in the
 two months that he has been away from them.

 ``I don't know if they were looking to see if he was wired, if he was bugged,''
 Gutierrez added.

 He said the boy's great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez -- with whom the child has been
 staying after being plucked from the sea on Thanksgiving Day -- saw the interview
 on Spanish-language Channel 23 and was ``disturbed [and] upset and he is
 surprised that they used those precious moments with him to do that.''

 Neither Lazaro Gonzalez nor his daughter Marisleysis Gonzalez, who family
 members say has become a sort of surrogate mother for Elian, could be reached
 for comment Wednesday night. But Gutierrez said he had not asked the boy
 about the meeting with his grandmothers.

 ``I have not asked the boy anything about that visit because when he went to that
 meeting he was scared and when he came out he was relaxed a little bit that he
 wasn't taken back to Cuba,'' Gutierrez said. ``So I don't talk to him about it. I talk
 to him about sports and school and high-fives -- little things that kids like to hear.''

 Gutierrez said the grandmothers' interview was also full of lies. For instance, they
 said they had not been able to talk to Elian on the telephone for more than four
 days. ``And that is just not true,'' Gutierrez said.

 Herald wire services contributed to this report.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald