NEW YORK - A cab driver who was arrested for lying about why he took a baby girl to a firehouse nervously apologized and defended himself Monday, hoping to get prosecutors to drop the charges against him.

Klever Sailema said he felt he was saving the 6-month-old girl, Daniella, from a harsher fate and was trying to protect his new girlfriend, the baby's aunt, from questions about her immigration status.

“Everything was falling on my responsibility, on my shoulders,” Sailema said at a news conference. “I only thought about the child.”

Sailema, 44, was hailed as a hero after he took the baby to a Queens firehouse on Thursday and said an unknown man had left her in his cab and disappeared.

But actually Sailema was in on the plan to get rid of the baby, who had been born to a 14-year-old girl and a 27-year-old man in the Bronx.

The baby's father told his sister - Sailema's girlfriend, Maria Siavichay, who also has been charged - that he couldn't cope with the baby, and she then asked Sailema to take the little girl to the firehouse.

The city has a safe haven law, which allows for newborns up to 5 days old to be left at a firehouse, church, hospital or other safe place, no questions asked. Fernando Mateo, a cab drivers' advocate who is championing Sailema's cause, said Sailema had no idea that Daniella was too old to qualify for the no-questions treatment.

“Instead of not asking questions, as the safe haven law is advertised, they (the firefighters) called the police,” Mateo said.

Sailema, who's from Ecuador, apologized Monday “for making up something that didn't exist.”

“My only purpose was doing the right thing,” he said in Spanish. “Unfortunately I did not do the right thing.”

Mateo, who at times translated for Sailema and at times spoke on his own, said Sailema told his story because, “If he said Maria gave him the child, then the cops were going to look for Maria. He didn't want to hurt Maria. He took the whole burden onto himself.”

Mateo said Siavichay also is from Ecuador and is in the U.S. illegally.

Sailema said he also thought about his own two daughters, left behind in Ecuador.

“At that moment, I thought that I also had a child,” he said. “What if my daughter was in this situation?”

Mateo said he met earlier Monday with Queens District Attorney Richard Brown and suggested the charges should be dropped.

Sailema and Siavichay's defense attorney, Kevin Faga, said they would fight the charges if the case went to trial, but he said dropping the charges would be more just.

“Please don't lose sight of the fact that we have a healthy child,” he said. “No harm has come to the child.”

Sailema is charged with falsely reporting an incident and criminal facilitation. His 21-year-old girlfriend is charged with criminal facilitation.

Brown said he would “take all the facts into consideration,” his spokesman Kevin Ryan said.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, at an appearance in Jacksonville, Fla., said of Sailema, “I think common sense says that he was trying to do the right thing.” But he added that the city's Administration for Children's Services has programs to help with cases like Daniella's.

An agency spokeswoman said temporary foster care, counseling and adoption are among the options. Mateo said Sailema was unaware of those programs.

The baby's mother, whose name has not been made public, is in the custody of the Administration for Children's Services, Bronx prosecutors said.

Police say she probably would not be charged, but they are looking for the father, Carlos Rodas, and he could face a statutory rape charge.

At the news conference, Siavichay called on her brother to surrender, saying, “Carlos, if you see me, please turn yourself in.”

She said the baby's mother had left days before and her brother wanted to keep the baby but couldn't because he had to work.

Mateo said the brother “already had a problem with the law: His girlfriend was a minor and there was a child. He was afraid if they caught him with the child he would be arrested.”

Mateo said the baby's grandparents, in Puerto Rico, also did not want to assume responsibility for her.

Sailema told of an emotional cab ride, with the baby's father hugging and kissing the baby and then saying, “I'm sorry, there's nothing more I can do for you,” before getting out of the car at his construction site. Then Siavichay, fearful of immigration questions, also got out, crying while hugging and kissing the little girl.

That left Sailema, a U.S. citizen, to take the girl to the firehouse and tell of a passenger who left the baby behind.

Mateo said that after Sailema told his story to the police, “he wanted to keep it quiet,” but the police, the Taxi and Limousine Commission and the cabdrivers group wanted to publicize it and reward him.