Pablo Ibarra/Newsmakers CUBANS DEMONSTRATE in front of the U.S. Interests Section building in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday to demand the return of 6-year-old Elian 6onzalez from Miami tjo Cuba. Cuban boy’s return sparks protests Decision pending on INS verification of father's relationship to child HAVANA (AP) - Tens of thou sands of Cubans marched along Havana’s main coastal highway Thursday, thrusting their fists in the air and demanding the return of a 6-year oid boy who was rescued off the , FJorida'coast two weeks ago.^ -- Calling the government-organized demonstration the “March of the Combatant Nation,” the communist daily Granma promised a turnout of at least 300,000. The chief of the U.S. mission in Cuba, meanwhile, said she was await ing a response from Cuban officials to a request by U.S. immigration officials for an interview with Elian Gonzalez’s father, \yho wants the child returned to the communist island. “They said they would not have an answer for us until this evening,” said Vicki Huddleston, head of the U.S. Interests Section, the American diplo matic mission, in Havana. “The ball is in their court,” she said. “We are on standby.” U.S. officials say the letter from American immigration authorities was delivered to the Cuban Foreign Ministry on Wednesday night follow ing a mass demonstration outside the American mission. The one-page letter indicated the Immigration and Naturalization Service wanted to interview Juan Miguel Gonzalez, the boy’s father, at the U.S. mission in Havana to deter mine “whether he has an ability to “prove that in fact he is the father of the child” and other basic facts, Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder told a news conference in Washington. Holder said INS officials would make the final decision on whether to return the child to Cuba. A U.S. consular officer in Cuba would deliver the letter by hand to Gonzalez on Thursday, Justice Department spokeswoman Carol Florman said. Telephone calls placed Thursday to the Gonzalez home in the city of Cardenas, about a two-hour drive east of Havana, rang busy. The letter asked the father to bring along any birth, baptismal, medical or school records, family photographs or testimony of neighbors to establish his parenthood and any divorce or other records to establish his claim to exer cise parental rights, Florman said. During Wednesday night’s demon « It will not stop until the boy, Elian, is returned to Cuba.” Fidel Castro '• Cuban president stration outside the U.S. mission, President Fidel Castro told a crowd of tens of thousands that the boy’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, had said he would not talk to American officials unless they can tell him when the child will be brought home. The Cuban government is calling for nationwide protests demanding the boy’s return. “It will not stop until the boy, Elian, is returned to Cuba,” Castro promised in a statement read at the demonstra tion. The boy was rescued off the Florida coast Nov. 25 and turned over to rela tives in Miami. Elian’s mother and stepfather died in the illegal attempt to flee to the United States. Elian’s father has insisted on the boy’s return to Cuba, but the child’s great-aunt and great-uncle say they can provide him with a better life in Florida. On Wednesday, American officials recognized that Elian’s father can assert his claim to take his son back to Cuba. In another partial victory for Cuba’s communist government, U.S. officials on Thursday returned a group of suspected boat hijackers to the island. The six suspected hijackers - five men and a woman who appeared to be in their teens and early 20s - were turned over to Cuban authorities. The hijacking and the custody dis pute have cast a shadow over U.S. Cuban migration talks scheduled Monday in Havana, but American and Cuban officials said the meeting should go ahead as planned. Criminal charges not expected in King case ■ Despite this tact, the King family still satisfied with jury’s verdict that the murder was a conspiracy. WASHINGTON (AP) - A 16 month federal investigation is not likely to produce criminal charges in the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., even though a civil jury concluded his 1968 murder was the work of a conspiracy, a top Justice Department official said Thursday. Word of the Justice Department’s conclusion did not dim die King fam ily’s satisfaction with verdict. They have doubted for years that the civil rights leader was killed by a lone gun man. James Earl Ray4 who pleaded guilty and later tried to recant, is the only person ever punished for the grime. — " -— —. - “We don’t care what the Justice Department does/’ King’s son Dexter told reporters in Adanta on Thursday. Because of information that came out in the civil trial in Memphis, “we believe that this case is over. ... We know what happened. This is the peri od at the end of the sentence.” Earlier in the day, Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder had told reporters at the Justice Department: “I would not expect that there would be any criminal prosecu tion out of our report.” The field investigation by the department’s civil rights division is almost complete, and its report could be released within weeks, Holder said. Although the Justice Department conducted a criminal investigation, statutes of limitation would bar prose cution of nearly all 30-year-old crimes, with die possible exception of an ongoing conspiracy. Holder did not say whether Justice Department investigators found no conspiracy, no crimes previously unknown or only crimes that could no longer be prose cuted. • 1 Attorney General Janet Reno, who ordered the investigation in August 1998, told reporters in Detroit, “we will pursue any lead that came out” in the civil trial, but any such pursuit is likely near completion. Holder said the department moni tored the civil trial as it went on because both the department and the trial focused on allegations of retired Memphis businessman Loyd Jowers. A good deal of testimony in the state civil trial could not be used in a federal criminal case because it was hearsay, according to a Justice Department official who requested anonymity. Because the Justice Department inquiry was limited to examining Jowers’ charges and another conspira cy allegation that emerged in recent years, Holder doubted the report would end speculation about the assassination. “The verdict yesterday ... will renew interest in the Ring assassina tion, and I suspect plant in the minds of many people doubts about some of those conclusions that were reached earlier,” Holder said. But the King family indicated the civil verdict would end their pursuit of further investigations. “We are prepared now to move on with our lives and hope that other peo ple will join us in this process so that the nation can move on with the heal ing that is so necessary,” King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, told CNN on Thursday. The Kings had Sued Jowers, who claimed six years ago that he paid someone other than confessed killer, James Earl Ray to kill King. The trial was the first time a jury heard conspiracy theories of the assassination at a Memphis motel. Ray pleaded guilty to the murder in 1969, so he did not go to trial. Ray tried unsuccessfully for 30 years to take back the guilty plea, but it was upheld eight times by state and federal courts. He died in prison of liver disease last year. Catalogue estimates 10,000 Serbs died WASHINGTON (AP) - The State Department released a cata logue of killing, looting and rape in the agency’s effort to document Serb human rights abuses in Kosovo. The full extent of atrocities may never be known, the report said. “As important as what we have learned is what we still do not know,” said Assistant Secretary of State Harold Koh. “Five months after the U.N. and NATO arrived in Kosovo, we’re still piecing together what is undeniably a widespread and sys tematic attempt to cleanse Kosovo of much of its Kosovar-Albanian population.” From March through June, an estimated 10,000 Albanians were killed, 1.5 million expelled from their homes, tens of thousands of homes in 1,200 cities damaged or destroyed and summary execu tions held at 500 sites across Kosovo, according to the report condemning Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. “This report is only a snapshot of the Milosevic regime’s brutal, premeditated and systematic cam paign,” said the report, called “Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo: An Accounting.” In a May report, the depart ment had said at least 6,000 Kosovar Albanians were victims of mass murder. An unknown number died in individual killings and an unknown number of bodies were burned or destroyed by Serbian forces throughout the conflict. Thursday’s follow-up report said it drew new information from accounts by refugees, the press and relief and other agencies working in Kosovo at the time, as well as declassified information from government and internation al organizations! “The evidence is also now clear that Serbian forces conduct ed a systematic campaign to bum or destroy bodies, or to bury the bodies, then rebury them to con ceal evidence of Serbian crimes,” the report said. “The number of victims whose bodies have been burned or destroyed may never be known,” the report said. “But enough evidence has emerged to conclude that proba bly around 10,000 Kosovar Albanians were killed by Serbian forces.” Others internationally have offered the same estimate, but the new 100-page report provides in catalogue-style the locations and details