The de facto leader of Honduras, Robert Micheletti, said on Wednesday he was prepared to leave office three months after grabbing power, but only if deposed president Manuel Zelaya ends his demand to be reinstated.
“If I’m an obstacle, I will step aside, but if I do, I demand this man moves to one side,” Micheletti said.
The remarks came at meetings of diplomats from across the Americas hoping to open a fresh attempt to resolve the political crisis triggered by the ouster of Zelaya at the end of June.
Micheletti said, however, that there was “no way to stop” the Nov. 29 elections, which the international community has warned it would not recognize if held under the current government.
Talks led by Organization of American States (OAS) chief Jose Insulza got under way after midday with a delegation of five foreign ministers, three deputy foreign ministers and US Deputy Secretary of State for Western hemisphere affairs Thomas Shannon.
“We are not here to make mutual recriminations. We are here to look for specific solutions to a situation that cannot go on any longer,” Insulza said.
Police, meanwhile, launched tear gas to disperse a crowd of protesters outside the Brazilian embassy, where Zelaya has been holed up with supporters since returning to the country by surprise last month.
Elsewhere in the capital, army troops and police special operations officers were heavily deployed in a bristling show of force as the talks began in a Tegucigalpa hotel.
Zelaya’s representatives at the talks are insisting he be restored to power unconditionally by next Thursday.
Reinstating him any later, they said, risked causing a delay in the late November presidential and legislative elections.
“Our principles are not negotiable,” Zelaya said on Canal 11 television. “What we can negotiate on are the steps that have to be taken to put in place the principles, like carrying out the reinstatement of the president.”
Embassy priest Andres Tamayo, one of the 60 people in Zelaya’s entourage, said that they were “not optimistic,” but added that they insisted on maintaining an “unshakeable position” to push against the de facto regime seeking to stay in power.
Envoys for the de facto government led by interim leader Micheletti back a plan to hold elections before allowing any reinstatement of the deposed president.
That position has led Zelaya to charge that the de facto regime “is planning to prolong its hold on power, deepening the crisis.”
The negotiators had said they also planned to meet with Zelaya at the Brazilian embassy and with Micheletti at his presidential office. The pair are not expected to meet face to face.
Zelaya, forced out of the country at gunpoint on June 28 while still in his pajamas, surreptitiously returned to the Honduran capital on Sept. 21, almost three months after the army-backed coup.
Micheletti and other Zelaya foes charge that the elected president overstepped his authority by seeking changes to the Constitution that would allow him to run for a second term.
Once in office, Zelaya, a Stetson-wearing rancher, veered to the left and allied himself with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, alienating business interests and some army officers.
“My government is convening a round table in a new spirit to address issues that have been under consideration as part of documents of the San Jose dialogue” mediated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, Micheletti said in a national radio and television address.
Zelaya, whose mandate as president had been set to end on Jan. 27, said, however, he could place no trust in a dialogue with the interim leadership.
“The phenomenal stubbornness of its not handing the presidency to the legitimately elected president endangers” future elections and deepens the political morass, he said.
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