MIAMI -- The father of a 4-year-old girl in a Cuban custody dispute testified for the first time Thursday.

Rafael Izquierdo wants to bring his daughter back to Cuba, while her foster parents want to keep her in Miami.

"All I wanted to say is that we're doing very well," Izquierdo said through a translator. "I'm doing very well with my daughter and her sister is doing pretty well with her little sister."

The case began in 2004 when the girl's mother, Elena Perez, won the visa lottery to come to the United States with her son and daughter, each of whom has a different father. Both fathers agreed to allow their children to go, but Perez was hospitalized after a suicide attempt in December 2005.

The children were put in foster care and ended up with Joe Cubas, 46, and his wife. Perez agreed to allow them to adopt her son, now 13, but not her daughter with Izquierdo, 32.

Attorneys Challenge Izquierdo

Attorneys for the Florida Department of Children and Families opened their questioning Thursday by challenging Izquierdo about letters and photographs he claims to have exchanged with his daughter and her mother after they moved from Cuba to the United States.

The line of questioning was meant to drill into accusations from the girl's mother under oath Wednesday that Izquierdo's attorneys, Magda Montiel Davis and Ira Kurzban, fabricated evidence and asked her to lie for Izquierdo to make it appear he was a more involved and interested father.

"Did you mail this letter from Cuba? Did you give it to someone to bring?" asked DCF attorney Jason Dimitris.

"No," answered Izquierdo.

"Did you hand it to Elena when you and she were in Magda Montiel Davis' office and tell her to testify she received the letter?" said Dimitris.

"No," said Izquierdo.

Izquierdo could not say for sure when he wrote the letter and didn't remember Perez's address in Houston, where he said he sent it. When pressed, he said his "more educated" sister wrote the letter for him and signed his name.

Dimitris then displayed a photograph of the girl on a bicycle surrounded by other toys and called Izquierdo's credibility into question. It's a photo referenced in a letter Izquierdo said he wrote from Cuba to the girl's mother in 2004 when she was living in Houston.

"Mr. Izquierdo, isn't it true the picture you're now describing in this letter were Christmas photos taken in Miami of Eli on a bicycle that (foster father) Mr. Cubas gave her, which makes this letter a fraud? You can't say it is because you know now Eli didn't get this bicycle until she was back in Miami in 2005," said Dimitris.

Izquierdo insisted it was not the photograph referenced in the letter.

Izquierdo, a farmer from the central Cuban village of Cabaiguan, said he wants to bring his daughter back to his family home, where he lives with his parents, wife and their 7-year-old daughter.

Perez has said she wants the girl to go back to her father.