Former President Bill Clinton said Saturday he had no regrets over sending Elián González back to live with his father in Cuba, and would order a federal raid on Little Havana all over again.
``I did everything I could to try to have this resolved in a peaceful way,'' he said, even with the hindsight of a decade after the episode sparked an international crisis between Cuba and the United States.
It also stoked tensions in Miami and roiled many in the Cuban-American exile community, who saw the Clinton administration decision to reunite the 6-year-old boy with his father from Cárdenas, Cuba, as tantamount to turning his future over to the Fidel Castro regime.
But Clinton said both international and U.S. law made clear what he had to do about the boy who was found clinging to an inner tube off the Florida coast on Thanksgiving Day in 1999. His mother and some 10 other Cubans in his group perished while trying to reach the United States on a raft.
Clinton made his remarks in response to an Associated Press reporter's question at the University of Miami's Coral Gables campus, where his Clinton Global Initiative has convened college students to encourage volunteerism and engagement.
``We had American children who had been kidnapped. They were in Iran. They were in Germany. They were in country after country after country,'' Clinton recalled.
TVNL Comment: At the very least, Elian was assured of life-long health care through a national plan in Cuba.
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