BY CAROL ROSENBERG

 WASHINGTON -- Elian Gonzalez's grandmothers campaigned in a blizzard-
 paralyzed Congress Tuesday and won outspoken support from five senators
 and a handful of House members against making their grandson a U.S. citizen.

 ''Elian ought to go home and be with his father. This is ridiculous and shameful,''
 said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., flanked by four other senators. ''You can have
 good families in bad countries. I regret deeply that this matter has come to
 Washington, D.C.''

 Raquel Rodriguez and Mariela Quintana made a flurry of public and private pleas
 to block the citizenship move one day after an ill-fated mission to meet privately
 with their grandson in Miami. They had spent Monday night in the home of a
 consular officer for the Cuban Interest Section after arriving in Washington late
 Monday with no hotel reservations.

 ''I ask all the American people who are on our side, and those who can help us, to
 stop the U.S. citizenship for our grandson,'' said Quintana, the boy's paternal
 grandmother.

 ''The only one who has the right to ask is his father. He's just a 6-year-old boy. He
 is a Cuban boy. He has to go back to Cuba and live in Cuba,'' she added.

 Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, ranking Democrat on an immigration
 subcommittee, was the grandmothers' official host, escorting them through the
 tunnels of the capital complex, mostly dark because few Congress members
 were in town.

 CUBAN CONTACTS

 But Congressional sources confirmed that the Cuban Mission -- not their official
 sponsor, the National Council of Churches -- directly contacted sympathetic
 members of Congress and arranged their schedule. More appointments were
 expected today.

 In one meeting, in the offices of Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., mission chief
 Fernando Remirez Estenoz, Cuba's vice minister of foreign affairs, waited in an
 anteroom while Congress members questioned the women about their desire to
 bring the child back to his father and grandfathers in Cuba.

 But Dodd, a fluent Spanish speaker and longtime opponent of U.S. sanctions
 against Havana, said both church officials and Cuban diplomats were excluded
 from his meeting while senators questioned the women on their motives.

 National Council of Churches spokesman Roy Lloyd said that in the first meeting
 Tuesday, with no Cuban officials present, Jackson Lee pointedly asked the
 women whether they were under duress, and whether they wanted political
 asylum. They declined the offer, Lloyd said, replying that they want to live in Cuba
 and want to take the child there with them.

 Dodd added that the women's emotions were credible.

 Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska also said that from the same
 conversations, ''It is obvious to me that [Elian's mother] was not a woman fleeing
 from a tyrannical regime.'' Instead, he said, the women told him that Elian's
 mother ''was forced on that boat'' by a violent, abusive boyfriend. Asked whether
 there would be a cost for opposing his Senate leadership's position on the Elian
 issue, he quipped, ''I'll probably lose my parking privileges.''

 Congressional action was not expected on the citizenship bill until next week at
 the earliest. The storm shut down both the airport and much business in the
 Capitol, postponing Senate action on a bankruptcy bill that Sen. Majority Leader
 Trent Lott has said will go first.

 House members don't meet for votes until next week.

 FILIBUSTER THREAT

 Meantime, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., vowed to filibuster ''as a grandmother'' to
 prevent a vote in the Senate.

 Also supporting the grandmothers with Boxer, Dodd and Hagel Tuesday were
 Democrats Richard Durban of Illinois and Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

 Rodriguez told Congress members that now that her daughter, Elian's mother, is
 dead, Elian is her last living family member -- and he belongs in Cuba.

 ''Elian has a fine home. He has three houses,'' she said, referring to hers,
 Quintana's and his father's. ''He has free education, the health care is free . . . I
 believe the child should be in Cuba. He was born in Cuba. He is a Cuban.''

 Tuesday, several House members advocated Elian's return to Cuba. They were:
 Ohio Republican Steve LaTourette, and Democrats Elijah Cummings and John
 LaFalce of New York, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, Ciro Rodriquez of Texas
 and David Minge of Minnesota.
 

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald