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Debaters agree: Elian should return home By The Associated Press PORTLAND -- Oregon and Cuban teenagers debating in Havana this week have disagreed over political and economic issues, but the battle over 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez has the students united in agreement. During their second and final debate Friday, high school students from both countries said that Elian -- rescued off the coast of Florida in November -- should return to his father in Cuba, The Oregonian reported. For the sake of fairness, the teens -- including 10 from Ashland High School -- said the boy's relatives in the United States and Cuba should settle their custody dispute through mediation in a neutral nation such as Switzerland. The group of 27 Oregon debate students from five high schools and 27 students from Havana's Villana-Revolucion Agricultural High School reasoned that, since Elian has already spent several months in the United States, it is humane to allow the boy to visit with his Miami relatives in the future if he wants to. "It may not be fair, but the fact is, he's been with the (Miami) family for some time now, and he has bonded with them," said Kristi Edmunson, a North Eugene High School junior. But mediation must be swift, insisted Darelys Santana, a junior at Villana-Revolucion. "Where he is, there is only one person who met him several years ago," she told an audience of 50 students and educators in a theater with large, open windows. "He hasn't seen one person he has known all his life. He hasn't been able to open his heart and cry. And if he doesn't come back soon, he could wind up brainwashed, turned against his own father." The students differed on points of law in the United States. The Cubans, for example, didn't understand how a family court judge in Miami could override the U.S. president's opinion that the boy should go home. Oregon students defended the U.S. process of law but acknowledged that it could seem slow and tedious. Other concerns included a perception by Cuban students that the United Nations acted as America's puppet. "What's fundamental here is that the proceedings not be influenced by the Miami mafia," said Nelson Martin Gomez, a junior at the vocational school. The Cuban media have portrayed a "Miami mafia" as controlling Elian's fate. Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA