Notebook

By Amanda Bower

FOLLOW-UP Maybe They Could Have A Play Date at Fidel's

Almost a year to the day after Florida fishermen pulled Elian Gonzalez from the sea, there emerges an Elian-in-reverse. On Nov. 12 five-year-old Floridian JONATHON LOREN COLOMBINI illegally entered Cuba with his mother, Cuban-born Arletis Blanco Perez, her boyfriend and their 18-month-old daughter. Blanco wants to stay.

Jonathon's father, Jon Kenneth Colombini, wants his boy back. "I don't think [Cuba is] a place for a child who has spent the first five years of his life in the United States, and knows the possibilities that exist for him here," he says.

Colombini's lawyer, Michael C. Berry, is dealing with the FBI, State Department and Cuban officials; the government there has said it wants to solve the problem "as rapidly as possible...with absolute impartiality."

Elian, meanwhile, is reported to be living happily with his father Juan Miguel Gonzalez in Cardenas. A 24-hour police guard near his home is the only sign that something may once have been different.

--By Amanda Bower