BEIJING — Chen Guangcheng , the blind dissident lawyer at the heart of a diplomatic crisis between China and the United States, telephoned in to a Congressional hearing on Thursday to plead for help in leaving his country. 
 
 Via a cellphone held up to a microphone at the hearing, Mr. Chen, speaking in Chinese, said: “I want to come to the U.S. to rest. I have not had a rest in 10 years. I’m concerned most right now with the safety of my mother and brothers. I really want to know what’s going on with them." 
 
 Mr. Chen, according to the English translation of his comments, also asked to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was in Beijing. "I hope I can get more help from her," he said. "Also, I want to thank her face-to-face." 
 
 The call, apparently made from Mr. Chen’s Beijing hospital room from which American officials have been barred, was another dramatic turn in a case that had for a short time looked like a deft achievement to secure Mr. Chen’s safety by American diplomats. That achievement has unraveled, leaving the Obama administration open to attacks from rights activists and Republicans that it had failed to adequately protect Mr. Chen after he left the sanctuary of the United States Embassy here on Wednesday. 
 
 Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, accused the Obama administration of rushing to complete the deal before Mrs. Clinton arrived for the high level meetings and failing “to put in place the kind of verifiable measures that would assure the safety of Mr. Chen and his family.” 
 
 “If these reports are true,” Mr. Romney said as he campaigned in Virginia, “this is a dark day for freedom and it’s a day of shame for the Obama administration.” 
 
 Mr. Chen’s dramatic reversal from wanting to stay in China after his escape nearly two weeks ago from harsh house arrest in eastern China and his six-day stay at the American Embassy left the administration struggling to create a new solution that would satisfy Mr. Chen, and be amenable to the Chinese government. 
 
 A key question facing the Obama administration will be the reaction of the Chinese government if Mr. Chen insists on leaving China. 
 
 If Mr. Chen requested asylum in the United States, he would need a passport and must apply for a visa. Another possibility would be Mr. Chen leaving China and going to a third country. 
 
 On Thursday, his lawyer said that a proposal for a temporary visit to the United States by Mr. Chen and his family was being considered, a possible face-saving way out of the diplomatic standoff. 
 
 Earlier, Mr. Chen suggested leaving the country with Mrs. Clinton. “My fervent hope is that it would be possible for me and my family to leave for the U.S. on Hillary Clinton’s plane,” he said in an interview with the Daily Beast. 
 
 The Chinese government, which issued a harsh statement Wednesday criticizing the United States for its handling of Mr. Chen, skirted the issue on Thursday. A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Weimin, said at a regular briefing at the ministry that Mr. Chen was a free person and, as far as he knew, was living in his town in Shandong Province. 
 
 The circumstances of Mr. Chen’s departure from the American Embassy on Wednesday were also still in dispute. The American ambassador, Gary Locke, reiterated Thursday that Mr. Chen had not been coerced into leaving the embassy on Wednesday and insisted that the dissident lawyer had left of his free will after a plan had been worked out with the Chinese government that he and his family could relocate to a city close to Beijing where he would pursue his law studies. 
 
 On Wednesday evening, American officials said they would do all they could to see Mr. Chen starting early Thursday morning. By not being able to talk to Mr. Chen in person, the administration was unable to determine a precise path forward for him, a senior official said. 
 
 Whether the Chinese government was actively preventing American officials from visiting Mr. Chen in the hospital, even during visiting hours that start at 3 p.m. local time on Thursday, was not immediately clear. But the longer the American officials were cut off from personal contact with Mr. Chen the more difficult it could become for the United States to reach a solution that satisfied the Chinese authorities. 
 
 American officials spoke to Mr. Chen by telephone Thursday, and met with his wife, Yuan Weijing, at a location near the hospital, the official said. ||||| * Chen appeals for help in call to U.S. congress hearing 
 
 * Republicans criticize Obama's handling of the case 
 
 * U.S. officials continue talks with Beijing on Chen's fate 
 
 By Chris Buckley and Paul Eckert 
 
 BEIJING/WASHINGTON, May 3 (Reuters) - Blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng made a dramatic plea for help in a cellphone call to a U.S. congressional hearing from his hospital bed in Beijing, raising the pressure on President Barack Obama over his administration's handling of the case. 
 
 Chen, a self-taught legal activist, sheltered in the U.S. Embassy for six days until Wednesday. He left the embassy shortly before U.S. Secretary of State Hillary of Clinton arrived in Beijing for talks aimed at improving economic and strategic relations between the two superpowers. 
 
 But within hours, Chen changed his mind about a deal that U.S. officials had said would allow him to relocate with his family and pursue his studies at a university. 
 
 Thursday's U.S. congressional hearing on Chen's case took a dramatic turn when a witness called the dissident on his cellphone and relayed his appeal for help to members of Congress and the media. 
 
 "I want to come to the U.S. to rest. I have not had a rest in 10 years," Chen said, according to a translation by Bob Fu, the president of Texas-based religious and human rights group ChinaAid. Fu held his cellphone to the microphone so that Chen could be heard, and translated his words. 
 
 Speaking from a Beijing hospital where he was reunited with his wife on Wednesday and where he was being treated for a foot injury, Chen said he wanted to meet Clinton to ask her for help and to thank her. 
 
 He said villagers who had helped him were "receiving retribution" and he was most concerned about the safety of his mother and brothers, according to Fu's translation. 
 
 "I'm really scared for my other family members' lives," Chen said. "They have installed seven video cameras and are in my house." 
 
 A pack of camera crews and reporters have been waiting outside Chen's hospital in Beijing, kept away from the entrance by police. Radio Free Asia quoted Chen as saying he had received no visits from friends and his phone service was unreliable. 
 
 CRITICISM MOUNTS 
 
 U.S. officials have defended their handling of the case, but Republicans and Chen's supporters were critical, saying the White House must ensure Chen's safety. He sought refuge in the U.S. Embassy after escaping from house arrest in a village in rural Shandong province on April 22. 
 
 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said if the reports were accurate, the U.S. Embassy "failed to put in place the kind of verifiable measures that would ensure the safety of Mr Chen and his family. 
 
 "If these reports are true, this is a dark day for freedom, and it's a day of shame of the Obama administration," Romney said during an event in Virginia on Thursday as he campaigns for the November election. 
 
 China's Foreign Ministry declined to comment on Chen's request to leave the country and repeated its criticism of the way the United States had handled the issue as "unacceptable". China has demanded an apology from the United States. 
 
 Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, said: "It should have been obvious to U.S. officials all along that there is no way to guarantee Mr Chen's safety so long as he is within reach of the Chinese police state." 
 
 Some rights activists were also critical. "We have learned that when people come to the United States Embassy they are not in fact 100 percent safe," said Reggie Littlejohn, president of the advocacy group Women's Rights Without Frontiers. 
 
 "They can be turned over to the Chinese authorities from whom they were attempting to escape," she told a news conference in Washington. 
 
 Fu of ChinaAid said Chen had told him that while he was at the embassy, U.S. officials conveyed a message that if he didn't leave that day his family would be returned to the village where his family had lived "in hell" for years. Fu quoted Chen as saying: "I felt great pressure to leave." 
 
 DECISION TO LEAVE 
 
 Chen, 40, is a legal activist who campaigned against forced abortions under China's "one-child" policy. 
 
 U.S. officials say Chen left the embassy of his own free will because he wanted to be reunited with his wife and children. They said he wanted to remain in China and never asked for asylum. 
 
 "He knew the stark choices in front of him," U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke told reporters in Beijing on Thursday. "He knew and was very aware that he might have to spend many, many years in the embassy. But he was prepared to do that ... 
 
 "And he was fully aware of and talked about what might happen to his family if he stayed in the embassy and they stayed in the village in Shandong province." 
 
 In an interview with CNN, Ambassador Locke said U.S. officials had spoken to Chen on Thursday. Asked if the United States could promise Chen that it would get him out of China, Locke replied: "We are not about to make promises that we cannot keep." 
 
 Frank Wolf, a Republican representative from Virginia and strident critic of Chinese rights practices, said the administration was at best "naive" in its handling of the case. 
 
 "The administration has a moral obligation to protect Chen and his family. To do anything less would be scandalous," Wolf said. 
 
 Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner were scheduled to hold further talks in Beijing on Friday. Washington had hoped the talks would secure more cooperation from China on trade and international flashpoints such as North Korea, Iran and Syria. 
 
 "TRAIN WRECK" 
 
 John Bolton, a former U.N. ambassador under President George W. Bush and now an informal adviser to the Romney campaign, told Fox News the situation was "a train wreck in process." 
 
 White House spokesman Jay Carney said the administration was aware that Chen and his wife had had a change of heart and that State Department officials were in discussions with Chen, his wife and Chinese officials. 
 
 Carney pushed back against critics who have suggested that U.S. diplomats, seeking to defuse the situation with Beijing, had pressured Chen into his original decision to stay in China. 
 
 "And at every opportunity he expressed his desire to stay in China, reunify with this family, continue his education and work for reform in his country," Carney said. "There was no pressure of any kind placed on him by U.S. officials." 
 
 The Chen case came at an tricky time for both nations: Obama is anxious to portray an image of strength in his dealing with foreign countries as he prepares for the election and China is engaged in a leadership change later this year. 
 
 The carefully choreographed power transition in Beijing has already been jarred by the downfall of ambitious senior Communist Party official Bo Xilai after he was caught up in a scandal linked to the apparent murder of a British businessman.
– A congressional hearing called today to discuss the plight of blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng got a first-hand perspective: Chen himself called in from his hospital bed in Beijing to ask for US help in leaving the country, reports Reuters. "I want to come to the US to rest," he said. "I have not had a rest in 10 years." He requested to meet with Hillary Clinton, both to seek help and to "thank her face to face." (Earlier, Chen told the Daily Beast he hoped to leave on her plane.) Chen also said he feared for those who helped him escape house arrest and for his family. "The thing I (am) most concerned (about) right now is the safety of my mother, my brothers, and I really want to know what's going on with them." Chen left the US embassy when the US and Beijing struck an apparent deal in which he would remain in China. But Chen changed his mind upon release, citing threats to his family. Republicans now accuse the White House of rushing into a bad deal ahead of Clinton's visit. "If these reports are true, this is a dark day for freedom and it’s a day of shame for the Obama administration," said Mitt Romney, according to the New York Times.