The interim foreign minister of Honduras rapidly extinguished hopes on Wednesday of a last-ditch deal to resolve the deep crisis there, insisting that ousted president Manuel Zelaya could not return.
Shortly beforehand, crisis mediator and Costa Rican President Oscar Arias proposed that Zelaya return today, in an expansion of a first plan already rejected by the de facto leaders who backed the army’s expulsion of the Honduran leader on June 28.
“The return of Mr Zelaya as president ... impossible,” interim foreign minister Carlos Lopez Contreras said on CNN’s Spanish edition in Costa Rica.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Everything else was up for negotiation, he said.
De facto leader Roberto Micheletti said in Honduras that he would withhold comment until the negotiators returned from Costa Rica.
Meanwhile, Zelaya told Venezuela’s Telesur channel that the crisis mediation “had practically failed.”
PHOTO: AFP
The interim leaders “have decided to deny all possibility of an agreement,” he said.
The second plan proposed in Costa Rica by Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, maintained the demand for Zelaya’s return, but also included a timetable for the accords and “suggestions” from the interim government.
Zelaya’s previous foreign minister, Milton Jimenez, said in Guatemala that “they accept the agreement.”
If both sides failed to agree, Arias suggested they turn to other international bodies, including the Organization of American States, to seek a solution “to the worst crisis in almost three decades of the young Honduran democracy.”
Arias’ new plan also called for Zelaya to remain in the presidency until the end of the current period in January.
It also included setting up a national unity government, advancing November elections by one month, amnesty for political crimes for six months and the immediate lifting of sanctions on Honduras.
The new text also implied the return of de facto leader Micheletti to head the Congress and called on Zelaya to give up his plans to reform the Constitution — a key issue in his dispute with the country’s courts, military and Congress.
A frustrated Arias said that Honduras had turned into the North Korea or Albania of Central America.
Despite increasing international isolation, the interim leaders have maintained that Zelaya would be arrested if he attempted to return.
Zelaya, exiled in neighboring Nicaragua, has said he would return “by air, land or sea.”
Hondurans remain deeply split over the possibility of his return, with many fearing more violence after Zelaya’s spectacular first attempt left at least one protester dead in clashes with soldiers.
“We don’t like you, Mel,” one banner read in Wednesday’s demonstration, using Zelaya’s nickname.
A top European official called on both sides to ease the tension, after the EU this week suspended 65.5 million euros (US$93 million) in aid to Honduras.
“Everything must be done so there is a peaceful solution, not a military confrontation,” EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said in Mexico.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver