MIAMI -- Manuel David Orrio, a well-known dissident journalist in Cuba and a former political detainee, is about to utter a phrase that will open the latest chapter in the political tug-of-war over Elian Gonzalez -- one that pits Fidel Castro's opposition groups in Miami and Havana against each other on the eve of a federal court case that will determine the young refugee's fate.

"Fidel Castro is right in this case," says Orrio, a member of the Cooperative of Independent Journalists in Havana. "According to international accords on children, the boy should be brought back to Cuba to be with his father," Orrio argues when reached by phone in Cuba. "Castro is right about that and has used the case to rally tremendous support here in Cuba and in the international community. The people pushing this have played into Castro's hands."

Of course, in the eyes of the right-wing Cuban exile community, Fidel Castro has never been right about anything, and Orrio would be lucky to escape a Little Havana restaurant in one piece, despite his credentials as an anti-communist.

Dissident leader Hector Palacios, who runs Havana's Center for Social Studies and has been jailed numerous times for his political positions, says, "What we are seeing is the extreme left here in Cuba and the extreme right in Miami fighting over this child. We think the boy should be here with his father and both sides are using him."

The emotional battle over Elian underscores the discord in approaches and, sometimes, ideologies between the two anti-Castro camps. In Miami, the swaggering right-wing opposition is led by the politically and economically powerful Cuban American National Foundation, which, like most Cuban-Americans, supports keeping Elian in the United States. On the other side of the Gulfstream are the frequently more moderate and relatively threadbare anti-communists of Cuba, splintered groups under constant threat of arrest. Many Cuban dissidents believe that their interests are being ignored, and even betrayed, by exile leaders in Miami, who have received far more publicity.

"On the radio here you have people who call the dissidents spies and agents of Cuban state security," says Gladys Perez, a former right-wing Miami Cuban who came back an ally of the dissidents after a visit to Cuba in the mid-'90s. "It's absolutely awful. Even if you are fighting for Cuba, but don't think exactly as they do, they won't support you. These are people who are risking their freedom and possibly their lives."

Dario Moreno, a professor of political science at Florida International University and a prominent commentator, agrees. "I think the exile movement here has been very insensitive to the dissidents," he says. "To speak out in Cuba takes great courage, but in Miami you hear people saying that the dissidents don't do enough. This leads to a backlash in Cuba. The dissidents say, 'Hey, listen, you in Miami are not risking your lives.' It was an unstable relationship to begin and has been extremely strained by the Elian thing."

Ninoska Perez Castellon, spokeswoman for the Cuban American National Foundation, by far the most powerful of the right-wing exile groups, says her organization supports some dissidents and has provided them with radio exposure in Miami and broadcasts to the island. But Perez Castellon does not hide her irritation with others, like Elizardo Sanchez, who spent eight years in a Cuban prison for political crimes, but has also been allowed to travel outside of Cuba. She believes Sanchez is being used as a propaganda tool by Castro to project an image of tolerance. And some dissidents may be siding with Castro on the Elian issue out of fear of reprisals, though she concedes that others may be expressing their honest opinions.

"I don't know what to make of people who admit there are large human rights problems in Cuba, but they still want us to send a six-year-old boy to live there," she says.

As president of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation in Havana, Sanchez offers a different perspective: "The laws in Cuba are not applied evenly. That is a major issue for us," Sanchez says. "The great majority of dissidents here in Cuba believe this case should be decided according to the law and that law says the child should go to his closest relative, in this case the father. The case shouldn't be decided in a way that is just to gain a momentary political advantage and hurt us in the long run. And while it drags on, the whole world has lost sight of the lack of a society of laws on this island."

In the past three months, the case has taken on the dimensions of a biblical drama. Some exiles have compared Elian to young Moses, found floating in the reeds, who will lead them back to their promised island. The case has also become clogged with real personalities who are often peripheral to the case: Attorney General Janet Reno; Elian's grandmothers, who came from Cuba to visit him and try to take him back; a Cuban diplomat accused of espionage; Fidel Castro's estranged daughter, who testified before a Senate hearing last week; and various U.S. politicians who have visted Elian and claim to have had conversations with him, even though he speaks no English and they no Spanish. But Cuban observers have their own take on the battle over Elian and they've coined their own phrase for it: "political pedophilia."

As the Elian drama has raged in Florida and Washington, diverting media attention from Havana, the stakes have increased in Cuba, where the Castro government has waged a crackdown on dissidents, with the arrest of dozens of anti-communist activists. The dissidents say the fact that their colleagues have been dragged from their homes and thrown into jails, some of them facing long prison terms, is being ignored by the press and the world. "We are being forgotten here," says the Center for Social Studies' Palacios.

Orrio agrees. He says in November, before the epic of Elian began, dissidents managed to meet with Latin American leaders during a regional summit in Havana, achieving unprecedented worldwide press coverage. Now no one pays attention to the tribulations of those on the island.

"Castro is coming out the winner here," he says.

It would be a stretch to say that the Elian saga has caused a complete split between conservative anti-Castro forces in the United States and the moderate opposition on the island -- both are seeking radical Democratic reform -- but it has exposed their differences and dampened already strained relations.

An overwhelming majority of Cuban exiles support the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba, a major building block of the Miami effort to topple the Castro regime. "But I'd says 85 percent of the dissidents in Cuba are against the embargo and see it as the main excuse that Castro uses to justify repression here," says Palacios.

A document signed in February by about 50 dissidents denounced the Castro government for human rights violations, but also called for the end of the embargo.

The two sides also dueled over the visit of Pope John Paul II to Cuba in 1998. While some exiles insisted the aging pope's visit would legitimize the Castro regime, the dissidents declared that the trip offered a way to strengthen the Cuban Catholic church, which supports democratic change in Cuba. The debate exposed the fact that many exiles don't trust the Catholic church, even though it is led by a Polish pontiff who is arguably the world's most successful and prominent anti-communist. And Havana's own Catholic leader, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, has sometimes been reviled on right-wing Cuban radio as being soft on the communists.

But a more fundamental truth about the relationship between the conservative exiles and the Havana opposition is that, in Miami, there is deep suspicion for any dissidents who still remain in Cuba.

The Elian incident raises a crucial question: Is it possible to support both the foundation and the dissidents in their battles with the Castro government? Some Miami moderates, like Gladys Perez, have already made the break with the hardline opposition.

Florida International University's Moreno says the rift is important because it underscores a split in philosophies between the two groups about how the agenda for Cuba's future should be shaped.

"The majority of dissidents want a soft landing. They want to build the infrastructure of a democracy and see change come out of that," he says. "The extreme Cuban exiles, on the other hand, want a violent overthrow. They want to see a Romanian solution, an entire regime swept aside, not a Polish or Czech solution, an evolution. Some exiles here want to go back to Cuba in 1959, pre-Castro. The dissidents don't want that."