WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Janet Reno said today that agents seizing Elian Gonzalez had to have a "show of force, not a use of force, to show we were in control." A psychiatrist who examined the 6-year-old Cuban boy said it's likely he suffered no lasting harm from the armed raid.

Reno said the pre-dawn hours of Saturday were "the most appropriate time with the least crowd" for immigration agents to conduct the raid. "This appeared to be the safest time possible to effect the transfer," she told reporters.

Elian, she said, "has had a lot of bad luck along the way. He's still resilient, he's still strong, he's still a smiling little boy."

"My hope is that the pieces of Elian's life can come together in a way that will be most positive for him, most enduring, and so he will look back on this time with as little pain as possible," she said.

Reno sidestepped a question on whether the Justice Department would intervene to set up a meeting between Elian and the Miami relatives who cared for him after his rescue from the Atlantic Ocean on Thanksgiving Day. Elian's great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez and cousin Marisleysis were the main caregivers.

"I can't imagine that Marisleysis will be out of his life," Reno said. "You could look at them and see a connection."

Lasting damage from raid unlikely

The child psychiatrist for the government watched Elian Gonzalez play happily with toy soldiers. She concluded that it is unlikely he suffered lasting harm from the armed raid that removed him, screaming, from his Miami relatives' home.

The boy displays a "sense of well-being and happiness with his father," wrote Dr. Paulina F. Kernberg of Cornell University Medical College.

"Whenever he made eye contact with his father, his face brightened."

Fluent in Spanish, Kernberg visited the Gonzalez family at Andrews Air Force Base just before they went to their new retreat at the Wye River Plantation on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

To gauge whether the raid left lasting damage, Kernberg gave Elian plastic soldiers that looked like the heavily armed Border Patrol agents who removed him from the Miami home.

The boy played with the toy soldiers "with pleasure and without anxiety," Kernberg wrote. The raid, "although clearly startling and frightening, was in all likelihood not a traumatic experience producing lasting effects."

Psychiatrists aligned with Elian's Miami relatives challenged Kernberg's conclusions and said the 2 1/2 hours she spent with him were not enough to judge his state of mind. They urged the government to permit Florida-based "medical professionals trusted by Elian" to evaluate him.

But for the moment, Elian was waiting to see his former kindergarten teacher and a 10-year-old cousin from Cuba. They arrived in Washington on Wednesday night and were expected to join him today at the wooded Maryland retreat where he is staying.

Also expected to join the family as early as today were four of Elian's Cuban classmates, along with three of their mothers and one father. "A young 6-year-old ... needs to have someone to play with," State Department spokesman James Rubin said.

Although the Clinton administration and Cuba's communist regime have shown more cooperation than confrontation on Elian's circumstances, a top State Department official sharply criticized Cuban President Fidel Castro's actions in the case as "absolutely deplorable."

Peter Romero, assistant secretary of state, accused Castro on Wednesday of using the boy's misfortune to create "a diplomatic-political clash" with the United States. "He manipulated this for complete domestic purposes," Romero said.

Father files declaration with appeals court

Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who wants to return to Cuba with his son, asked the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to allow him alone to speak for his son, rather than the Miami relatives. The relatives are appealing a district court's dismissal of the petition they filed to obtain political asylum for Elian in the United States.

In a declaration filed Wednesday with the 11th Circuit by the Justice Department, Kernberg recommended against allowing the Miami relatives to visit Elian "in their current angry state."

"In that frame of mind, they would likely be disruptive for the child, who demands a quiet period of emotional healing from the last few weeks of stress."

In a separate filing with the 11th Circuit, Gregory Craig, attorney for Juan Miguel Gonzalez, asked the Atlanta court to let the father "assert his rights as a father ... to speak on behalf of Elian, who has no other suitable representative."

The father asked the court to reject a bid by the boy's great-uncle and former temporary guardian, Lazaro Gonzalez, to have his lawyers and doctors see Elian and speak for him before the court.

The Justice Department also opposed Lazaro's motion for a court-appointed guardian to examine and speak for Elian. It pledged to provide regular reports from a psychiatrist and a social worker hired to monitor Elian.

On Capitol Hill, Lazaro Gonzalez, his daughter, Marisleysis, and other Miami relatives campaigned to keep the boy in this country, before returning to Miami later Wednesday. Republicans plan hearings next Wednesday on the raid.

Castro 'calling the shots'

"Obviously they are very sad and we share their sadness at this point," said Sylvia Iriondo, president of the anti-Castro group Mothers Against Repression, who flew home to Miami with the relatives. "Castro and his regime are calling the shots here, and it is very sad for all of us that this child has not been able to see this family with whom he has shared the most difficult and trying times."

Although Marisleysis Gonzalez has characterized her relationship to Elian as that of a surrogate mother, Kernberg said Elian may have a schoolboy crush on her. Elian confided to his stepmother that he has a secret love, Mary, Kernberg wrote.

"His feelings for Marisleysis are similar to the romantic feelings of a school boy for his teacher or a wished-for girlfriend."

Dr. Lidya Usategui, a Miami child psychiatrist supporting the view of the American Gonzalez family, said Kernberg spent too little time with Elian for a proper evaluation.

Dr. Jose Carro, president of the Cuban Pediatric Society in Exile, said that in the group's view, Elian "continues to suffer. ... Elian should have access to his family from Miami."

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