WASHINGTON — Bye-bye, Elian? Well, not so fast.

Elian Gonzalez could be allowed to return to his native Cuba by Wednesday, but his Miami relatives are mounting a last-gasp effort to keep him on U.S. soil unless the Supreme Court rules otherwise.

On Monday, the relatives filed a formal appeal with the court, asking that Elian be required to remain in the United States until the high court has a chance to hear the case.

Pamela Falk, a professor at the City University of New York School of Law, said Monday that the latest appeal was a long shot, and she predicted that Elian's U.S. stay was nearing an end.

Elian, 6, has been living with his family at a historic home in a residential area of Washington. He remained out of sight Monday while his fate was being weighed by lawyers and by judges from the nation's highest court.

The appeal filed Monday said the case's legal issues "boil down to a single straightforward question: Can the Immigration and Naturalization Service deprive an alien child of his statutory and constitutional right to apply for asylum without conducting any hearing of any kind — or even without interviewing the child himself?"

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The appeals court unanimously rejected the Miami relatives' request for a rehearing and said its earlier order requiring Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, to keep the boy in this country would dissolve at 4 p.m. Wednesday. Lawyers for the relatives asked to keep Elian in the United States through the formal appeal.

Asked what would happen if the high court does not act, Kendall Coffey, an attorney for the relatives, said in Miami: "If the injunction is not granted by Wednesday at 4 p.m., our assumption is that there is nothing that will prevent the child from being immediately moved to Cuba."

Elian, who was rescued off the Florida coast on Thanksgiving Day, has become a rallying point for anti-Castro sentiments in the United States, particularly in Miami's Cuban exile neighborhoods. The boy's mother and 10 other people drowned after their boat sank en route from communist Cuba to the United States.

Elian stayed with his Miami relatives until federal agents seized him on April 22 and turned him over to his father pending the court appeals.

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