Interim Honduran leader arrives for talks on coup

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — Leaders of the government that ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya in a coup arrived in Costa Rica Thursday for talks aimed at resolving the crisis, but with both sides questioning the other’s claim to the presidency, there seemed to be very little common ground.

Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, is mediating negotiations between Zelaya and interim leader Roberto Micheletti at the request of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton — a move some consider to be the Obama administration’s first big test in Latin America.

Micheletti’s aides said he does not plan any face-to-face meetings with the former ally he and other Honduran politicians ordered into exile at gunpoint on June 28. They also accused Zelaya’s followers of gathering in San Jose to “create tension” during the talks.

But Micheletti, a congressional leader named president by legislators following the coup, said on arrival that he is committed “trying to solve my country’s internal differences in a peaceful way.”

“We will work ceaselessly to find a successful solution to the present situation,” Micheletti said. “We are fully confident that we will find the solution in the framework of our constitution,” the document he accuses Zelaya of having violated by insisting on holding a referendum many say was meant to extend his term in office.

It is still a stretch: Zelaya insists he must return, while Micheletti says he cannot.

“At this time, it is not foreseen that President Micheletti would meet with Zelaya, because the meetings are separate,” Defense Minister Adolfo Lionel Sevilla told the HRN radio station earlier. “The meetings are bilateral and individual, between President Micheletti and his Costa Rican host,” Arias.

And Micheletti’s information minister, Rene Zepeda, told The Associated Press that pro-Zelaya activists were gathering Costa Rica “to create tension during the talks.”

Arias, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for mediating civil wars in Central America, sought to dampen expectations of a quick fix: In two days there could be a solution or it could be that in two months there is no solution,” said Arias,

But Arias added that usually once talks start, “positions begin to soften.”

The sides couldn’t be much farther apart.

Zelaya told reporters he plans to “listen to the de facto government explain how they plan to leave,” and expects them out in 24 hours. He also said he wouldn’t negotiate because doing so “would be like inviting to dialogue someone who violated your family.”

Micheletti, for his part, has said the talks should “start from the understanding that Zelaya’s return is not open to negotiation.”

Micheletti also replaced his newly appointed foreign minister who caused a flap by repeatedly referring to President Barack Obama as “a little black man who doesn’t know anything” and a “little black field hand.” He named Roberto Flores, Honduras’ former ambassador to the United States, to replace Enrique Ortez late Wednesday.

Ortez has been a prominent spokesman for Micheletti, defending the coup as legal because congress and the Supreme Court had ruled Zelaya violated the constitution by pursuing a referendum on retooling the charter.

The world — including the U.S. government, the United Nations and the Organization of American States — has rallied behind Zelaya, demanding he be returned to power and imposing or threatening sanctions and aid cuts against Micheletti’s de facto administration.

Protests demanding Zelaya’s return and rival demonstrations in favor of Micheletti have filled Honduras’ streets in recent days.

Zelaya, a wealthy rancher who moved to the left after his election and allied himself with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, made an unsuccessful attempt to return home Sunday despite Micheletti’s promise that he would be arrested on arrival. The thwarted bid sparked clashes between his supporters and security forces at the Tegucigalpa airport. At least one person was killed.

Zelaya has offered to drop his aspirations for a constitutional change that might allow him to run for another term.

Zelaya’s supporters claim Honduras’ wealthy class backed the military action because of what he did for the poor, including raising the minimum wage. Micheletti has accused Chavez of stoking class divisions in Honduras.

Zelaya’s wife, Xiomara Castro, has emerged as the public face of the movement to restore Zelaya to power, telling the AP that she fled to the US Embassy because she feared the Honduran military would shoot her on sight after soldiers whisked Zelaya out of the country in his pajamas.

Though she still sleeps in hiding, she has vowed to take to the streets daily in protest of the coup, pressed into action at the urging of the family of a Zelaya supporter who was slain by soldiers at the airport Sunday. She said she overruled her husband on joining the marches.

“He told me that my presence could cause more problems, more persecution on the family. But I insisted,” Castro said, while trudging up a steep road with 3,000 Zelaya supporters who blocked traffic on a route connecting the capital of Tegucigalpa with a highway to Nicaragua. “I consider our presence here as like having the president himself here, like feeling that the president is standing firm.”