BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

 Herald Publisher Alberto Ibargüen says Attorney General Janet Reno and four
 Miami community leaders appear to have tragically misunderstood each other
 during their last-ditch effort last week to broker a deal on Elian Gonzalez's future.

 Ibargüen participated in a conference call Saturday between Reno and the
 Miamians -- lawyer Aaron Podhurst, University of Miami President Edward T.
 Foote II and Cuban-American businessmen Carlos Saladrigas and Carlos de la
 Cruz -- that reexamined many aspects of the failed negotiations.

 Ibargüen said he had not participated in the group's negotiations last week but
 had agreed to help the Miamians on Saturday as they put together ``a
 contemporary record of the best recollection" of their negotiations with Reno over
 the previous 44 hours. Podhurst and Foote were going to the Heat game later that
 day and Ibargüen's Herald office was close to the AmericanAirlines Arena.

 Podhurst received a message at the start of the meeting that Reno wanted to
 talk, and both sides agreed to a conference call that turned into a post-mortem of
 the failed negotiations and the raid by armed federal agents to remove Elian from
 his relatives' Little Havana house.

 Although the 1 1/2-hour conversation was originally off the record, Reno and the
 Miamians later gave Ibargüen permission to reveal its details after lawyers for
 Elian's Miami relatives mentioned it in a court filing.

 The conference call showed that while the Miamians believed Reno had been ``a
 decision maker" in their negotiations over the Elian case, she had been in fact
 ``only a broker" between them and Elian's father in Washington, Ibargüen said.

 That false assumption may have led the Miamians to misperceive Reno's
 encouraging -- but personal -- reactions to their negotiating proposals as definitive
 replies, he added.

 And although the Miamians believed they had made great progress during their
 44-hour negotiating effort, by the end Reno was clearly frustrated from her months
 of fruitless talks with Elian's Miami relatives, he added.

 Adding to the confusion, the negotiators had been at three different locations,
 talking by phone.

 ``At one point Reno said that had they been in the same room the night might
 have ended differently," Ibargüen recalled.

 ``I believe a number of false assumptions were made in good faith," Ibargüen said.
 But, he added, "I came away convinced that all five of the people in the
 conversation acted in good faith.''

 Ibargüen recalled the conference call as ``direct but never argumentative," a
 respectful talk between people who clearly cared deeply about Elian's case, its
 impact on Miami and the Cuban-American community.

 De la Cruz, who along with his wife was at the home of Elian's Miami relatives
 when the federal agents launched their raid at 5:15 a.m., opened the conversation
 with a ``heartfelt complaint," Ibargüen said.

 ``De la Cruz told her that he believed . . . they were very close to what could have
 been an agreement that would have satisfied the parties, told her that he was . . .
 extremely disappointed and felt that she had done something very detrimental for
 Miami," Ibargüen said.

 Reno replied that she had believed the Miamians had been negotiating in good
 faith, Ibargüen added, ``but she said her view was that she had been negotiating
 over a long period of time with a lot of different people and that the negotiating
 targets were always moving."

 ``She said that not only had their time run out, but that the progress that the
 Miami group thought they had made was obviously not that much progress," the
 Herald publisher said.

 The name of Gregory Craig, lawyer for Elian's father Juan Miguel, never came up
 in the Saturday conversation, Ibargüen said. Craig later confirmed to reporters that
 he had been in contact with Reno throughout her conversations with the Miami
 group.

 One of the most emotional moments of the Saturday conference calls came when
 de la Cruz complained that the federal raid had shown Reno's ``disrespect" for
 Miami's Cuban community, prompting a passionate defense by the attorney
 general.

 ``She said anyone who thinks that . . . cannot know the kinds of threats, harsh
 comments and pressures she had had to endure," Ibargüen said. ``It was a
 pained and painful response."

 Ibargüen said another sensitive moment came when Podhurst, Reno's friend of 30
 years, complained that her failure to tell him the raid was imminent had kept him
 from alerting de la Cruz at the Lazaro Gonzalez home.

 ``Reno said that the 10 minutes before the raid were the worst 10 minutes of her
 life," Ibargüen recalled. ``He said, `Well good, because the 10 minutes after the
 raid were the worst of my life, with worry whether my friend had been harmed.' "

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald