Elián González poised to be top Cuban lawmaker decades after Florida deportation

When he was six, his terrified face - photographed during a raid by armed immigration officers on his family's Miami home - became one of the most memorable images of cold war tensions between the US and Cuba.

The tense situation created a headache for the Bill Clinton White House. Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno, became a pariah among Miami's influential Cuban expat community for siding with the father and ordering the early morning seizure of the boy at gunpoint. His angry relatives said Reno had tricked them by ordering the military-style raid while they believed they were negotiating a voluntary handover.

"I think I would have become the poster boy for that group of Cubans in Miami that tries to destroy the revolution, that try to make Cuba look bad," he said.

"Fidel put many things in my hands. Fidel told me if I wanted to be an athlete, he supported that; if I wanted to be a swimmer, he supported that. If I wanted to be an artist, he supported that - and he did."