MIAMI (Reuters) -- Photographs of Elian Gonzalez wearing the scarf of a Cuban
                  communist youth group at his temporary U.S. home are causing a flap in Miami,
                  with those fighting to keep the boy in the United States saying it proves he will
                  undergo indoctrination if returned to his homeland.

                  Lawyers for Elian's Miami relatives filed papers on Thursday with an appeals
                  court in Atlanta drawing the judges' attention to the photos in a move to bolster
                  their claim that the 6-year-old shipwreck survivor should be granted a political
                  asylum hearing.

                  They also demanded the Miami relatives, who lost custody of Elian when armed
                  federal agents raided their home on April 22 after they refused to hand him back
                  to his father, be allowed to see the boy.

                  Elian's tribulations have become an international cause celebre. Since the raid, he
                  has stayed with his father Juan Miguel Gonzalez, a worker at Cuban tourist park,
                  on the lush Wye Plantation estate in Maryland pending the appeals court ruling.

                  With a court injunction barring the family from returning to Communist-ruled
                  Cuba until then, four of Elian's schoolmates and his teacher from his hometown
                  Cardenas and an impromptu Cuban classroom has been set up under an
                  unprecedented agreement between the normally hostile U.S. and Cuban
                  governments.

                  Photographs of Elian wearing the blue scarf of the Communist "Young Pioneers"
                  -- a mass organization which Cuban schoolchildren are expected to join --
                  appeared on the Web site of the Cuban state newspaper Granma on Tuesday.
                  They were seized upon by the Miami relatives and their Cuban exile supporters
                  as evidence he was being indoctrinated.

                  "With the complicity of the United States government, these individuals (the
                  father, his lawyer and Cuban officials) have allowed foreigners on our soil to
                  dress up our client in his Pioneers outfit while also teaching him revolutionary
                  Cuban songs swearing allegiance to Che Guevara and the Cuban revolution," the
                  lawyers wrote to the appeals court.

                  In an attached affidavit, psychologist Marta Molina -- who defected from Cuba
                  last August -- said her experience led her to believe that if he returned to Cuba,
                  Elian would forced to join the Pioneers, swear allegiance to communism and be
                  brainwashed to forget his experiences in the United States.

                  The U.S. Immigration and Naturalisation Service, whose ruling that Elian should
                  be reunited with his father was upheld by a federal judge in Miami in March,
                  played down the issue. A spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section, Havana's
                  diplomatic mission in Washington, echoed that view.

                  "All the Cuban children use that as part of their uniform in Cuba," spokesman
                  Luis Fernandez said.