Deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya and the interim government agreed on Saturday to create a joint Cabinet and ditch an amnesty for coup leaders, one of the ousted leader’s negotiators said.
But both measures depend on Zelaya’s return to the presidency, still far from certain four months into the standoff that emerged from the June 28 coup.
Union leader Juan Barahona, one of Zelaya’s top three negotiators, told a rally of hundreds of the president’s followers that the joint cabinet, if realized, would be composed of ministers from both governments.
The Zelaya camp, he added, opposed amnesty because such a move would mean “amnesia, forgetfulness and forgiveness, and we got cannot condone the coup.”
“If after all of this, they say that there is not going to be reinstatement [of Zelaya], what difference does it make if we made progress on anything else?” Barahona said. “Tuesday, we are going to get at that key point in detail. If on October 15 we do not have a deal, the talks will have failed.”
The formation of a national unity government and amnesty for crimes linked to the coup were two key points of the San Jose reconciliation agenda set out in August, whose central tenet calls for Zelaya’s return to office.
The discussions came ahead of a three-day pause that prolongs the uncertainty of resolving the political crisis that has paralyzed the impoverished Central American country since late June.
The resumption of talks tomorrow will come just two days before the Thursday deadline given by the Zelaya camp for his unconditional return to power.
Reinstating him any later, supporters say, risks causing a delay in presidential and legislative elections planned for Nov. 29.
“I do not understand the three-day break,” Zelaya’s wife Xiomara Castro said from within the Brazilian embassy, where the deposed leader has been holed up since his surprise return to the capital on Sept. 21. “When there’s persecution, repression, the minutes and hours count. [The pause] is a way to delay the process, with time passing and the president still not returning to power.”
A diplomatic delegation from the Organization of American States left Honduras on Thursday without resolving a months-old political impasse between de facto leader Roberto Micheletti and Zelaya, who was forced out of the country at gunpoint.
A rancher known for his trademark white cowboy hat, Zelaya veered to the left after his election and alarmed conservatives by aligning himself with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. They feared Zelaya was seeking to change the constitution to allow himself to seek reelection.
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
HISTORIC: After the arrest of Kim Keon-hee on financial and political funding charges, the country has for the first time a former president and former first lady behind bars South Korean prosecutors yesterday raided the headquarters of the former party of jailed former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol to gather evidence in an election meddling case against his wife, a day after she was arrested on corruption and other charges. Former first lady Kim Keon-hee was arrested late on Tuesday on a range of charges including stock manipulation and corruption, prosecutors said. Her arrest came hours after the Seoul Central District Court reviewed prosecutors’ request for an arrest warrant against the 52-year-old. The court granted the warrant, citing the risk of tampering with evidence, after prosecutors submitted an 848-page opinion laying out
STAGNATION: Once a bastion of leftist politics, the Aymara stronghold of El Alto is showing signs of shifting right ahead of the presidential election A giant cruise ship dominates the skyline in the city of El Alto in landlocked Bolivia, a symbol of the transformation of an indigenous bastion keenly fought over in tomorrow’s presidential election. The “Titanic,” as the tallest building in the city is known, serves as the latest in a collection of uber-flamboyant neo-Andean “cholets” — a mix of chalet and “chola” or Indigenous woman — built by Bolivia’s Aymara bourgeoisie over the past two decades. Victor Choque Flores, a self-made 46-year-old businessman, forked out millions of US dollars for his “ship in a sea of bricks,” as he calls his futuristic 12-story
A man has survived clinging to the outside of an Austrian high-speed train, Austria’s state railway said on Sunday, reportedly after it left while he was having a cigarette break. The man late on Saturday grabbed onto the outside of the train at St Poelten, west of Vienna, and was later taken onboard after the train performed an emergency stop, railways spokesman Herbert Hofer said. “It is irresponsible, this kind of thing usually ends up with someone dying,” he said. “And you’re not just putting yourself in danger, if you end up under the train there’s rescuers, there’s police, fire
RSS