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Honduras' interim President Roberto Micheletti met with coup mediator Costa Rica's President Oscar Arias but left the country without meeting ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya - Source: Reuters -
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The two rivals for power in Honduras started a dialogue through
a mediator, but there was no face-to-face meeting or breakthrough
to solve the political crisis sparked by last month's coup.
Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, and the politician who
replaced him after the June 28 coup, Roberto Micheletti, left
behind delegations in Costa Rica's capital San Jose, holding talks
under the mediation of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias.
Both men met separately with Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, but
they did not sit down for direct discussions.
"There was no face-to-face meeting," Costa Rican presidential
spokesman Pablo Gueren told reporters.
The absence of a direct meeting or any public sign of
reconciliation suggested Arias faced a tough task in trying to
bring together the entrenched positions held by the rivals over the
coup, which has stirred up tensions in Central America.
"The dialogue has started," Micheletti, who was installed by
Honduras' Congress after Zelaya's overthrow, said before flying
back to his country, a coffee and textile exporter which is one of
the poorest in the Americas.
The United States and the Organization of American States are
pressing for Zelaya's peaceful reinstatement, which OAS chief Jose
Miguel Insulza said was the key for a successful outcome to the
talks in San Jose.
But although Micheletti said his interim government would go ahead
with previously scheduled elections in November, he showed no
indication of being ready to give up power despite international
pressure and repeated demands from Zelaya.
Costa Rica's Communication Minister Mayi Antillon said the two
delegations would try to move toward an agreement and hopefully ...
the presidents will come back.
"There are respectful talks around a table," she added.
Micheletti said any solution would have to respect Honduras' laws
and constitution.
Reflecting the distance between the two sides, Micheletti has
insisted Zelaya's ouster was lawful because he violated the
constitution by seeking to lift presidential term limits.
Zelaya stressed that both the OAS and the United Nations General
Assembly backed his reinstatement. He has called Micheletti a
criminal and said he was guilty of treason.
Stumbling block
Arias won the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize for helping to solve conflicts
in Central America.
"The stumbling block is that the de facto government accept the
return of the constitutional government," OAS chief Insulza told
reporters in Washington.
He said that provided Zelaya's restoration was accepted, all
other options, like bringing forward the elections, or a national
unity government or an amnesty, were open to negotiation.
But for the OAS, which suspended Honduras on Saturday, early
elections would be acceptable only if held after Zelaya is restored
and not under Micheletti, Insulza said.
Zelaya, a logging magnate who was elected in 2005 and was due to
leave office in 2010, angered his country's ruling elite and
military by increasingly allying himself with Venezuela's leftist
President Hugo Chavez, a fierce critic of Washington.
Honduran media on Thursday published a poll showing 41% of
Hondurans thought that Zelaya's ouster was justified.
The CID-Gallup poll carried out between June 30 and July 4 found
28% of those interviewed opposed the coup.
US President Barack Obama, apparently looking to wipe clean
Washington's past record of supporting often bloody military coups
and regimes in Latin America when it suited US interests, has made
clear he considers the coup was wrong.
On the eve of Thursday's talks, the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa said
Washington had suspended $US16.5 million in military assistance
programs to Honduras, and added a further $US180 million in US aid
could also be at risk.
Micheletti's administration called the US move
counterproductive.
Failure to strike a deal in Honduras could prompt Zelaya to renew
attempts to return to his country to try to win back power with the
help of his supporters and left-wing allies like Venezuela, Cuba
and Nicaragua.
Venezuela's Chavez, who lent Zelaya a plane in which he made an
abortive bid to return home on Sunday, has vowed to do everything
possible to obtain his reinstatement.
In an opinion piece in The Washington Post, Arias called the
Honduran coup a wake-up call for the hemisphere and blamed it on
reckless military spending in the region.
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