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Honduras pact fails to end crisis

An agreement to end a four-month political crisis in Honduras collapsed early yesterday after two rival leaders failed to form a unity Cabinet to heal the damage from a June coup.

Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya declared the pact dead just a week after it was signed and called on Hondurans to boycott presidential elections this month because de facto leader Roberto Micheletti moved to form a new government without him.

The rival leaders had agreed to form a so-called unity and reconciliation Cabinet by Thursday, but they then clashed over who would lead the Cabinet until Congress decided whether or not to reinstate Zelaya.

“It’s absurd what they are doing, trying to mock all of us, the people who elected me and the international community that supports me. We’ve decided not to continue this theater with Mr. Micheletti,” Zelaya said.

Earlier, Zelaya declined to name any members to the Cabinet that was supposed to be formed and Micheletti said he was going ahead without them.

“We’ve completed the process of forming a unity government ... It represents a wide spectrum despite the fact that Mr. Zelaya did not send a list of representatives,” Micheletti said in a televised speech to Hondurans.

Ministers from the de facto Cabinet resigned to make way for the new government, which Micheletti said would include names put forward by different political factions.

The impoverished coffee and textile-exporting country has been isolated diplomatically and cut off from international aid since Zelaya was toppled by soldiers and sent into exile in his pajamas in a June 28 coup.

Zelaya snuck back into Honduras in September and has been holed up in the Brazilian embassy in the capital ever since.

The worst crisis in Central America in 20 years brought back unwelcome memories of decades of military regimes, human rights abuses and political instability that plagued Latin America during the Cold War.

The US and the Organization of American States (OAS) had pushed the two sides to negotiate a way out of the crisis and celebrated last week’s accord, but it turned out that the pact contained too many internal contradictions to be successful.
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