BY AMY DRISCOLL

 The odds were stacked against lawyer Aaron Podhurst from the start -- too many people doing too much talking, from locations too far apart, deep into the night.

 That's how professional mediators described the daunting task that faced Podhurst in his all-night role as mediator between the Miami family of Elian Gonzalez and the U.S. Justice Department in Washington, D.C.

 ``You had the irresistible force meeting the immovable object as emotions ran higher and higher,'' said Paul R. Marcus, a family lawyer for 32 years and professional mediator for the last six. ``You had input from so many people. It was a minefield on both sides.''

 Trying to conduct negotiations by phone, he added, would further strain patience and willingness to compromise.

 ``I have mediated cases on the telephone, and it's a very different way of mediating. The people involved have to be motivated to make it work,'' he said. ``Distance complicates things.''

 Most mediators prefer to meet with each side separately and then bring the sides to a single location -- for both psychological reasons and convenience.

 ``You attempt to get to the underlying issues, because frequently that is driving the dispute,'' said Frank Zotto, vice president for case management at the American Arbitration Association in New York.

 He offered an analogy: Two daughters are fighting over an orange. Their mother resolves the dispute by cutting the orange in half. One girl promptly eats the fruit and throws out the peel, while the other grates the peel for a recipe and throws out the flesh.

 ``By not understanding the underlying issues -- why do you want the orange? -- any mediation can fail,'' Zotto said. ``As a mediator, you have to ask why.''

 But for mediation to work, Zotto noted, both sides must want it.

 ``If one side is not going to participate, there's not much point in trying mediation,'' he said.

 Another key point in the failure of the Elian negotiations may have been the late hour, some mediators noted.

 ``At that time of day -- 3 or 4 in the morning -- people are a lot more vulnerable, their emotions swing,'' said Bobbie Heiman, a relationship counselor who has worked as a mediator for three years.

 When she conducts mediations in child custody cases, she posts the pictures of the children on the wall of the meeting room, to keep the parties focused on what's at stake.

 ``It's a technique to keep their minds on the issue at hand. When it comes to children, it's so easy to let emotions get the best of you,'' she said. ``I put those picture right in front of them, so they don't forget.''

 She said the number of people doing the negotiating in the Elian case was ``really wrong.''

 ``You had too many people on both sides of the equation, everybody second-guessing everybody else. How can you make any progress in that situation?'' she asked.

 She said the abrupt end of negotiations -- followed by the seizure of Elian from his Miami relatives' home -- did not unduly surprise her.

 ``In mediation, you can be going along, thinking everything is going really good, and then -- bam -- the whole thing falls apart. Usually, that's when one side had an agenda and they just weren't going to agree to a compromise,'' she said.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald