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CENTRAL AMERICA |
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Micheletti
Negotiator Meets with Zelaya at Brazilian
Embassy
TEGUCIGALPA – Businessman Arturo Corrales, a
member of de facto Honduran President
Roberto Micheletti’s negotiating committee,
held a surprise meeting with deposed leader
Mel Zelaya at the Brazilian Embassy to
analyze the dialogue being pursued by the
two camps to resolve this country’s
political crisis.
Corrales told reporters upon leaving the
Brazilian mission, where Zelaya has been
holed up for about a month, that they had
exchanged ideas “with an eye toward the
future” and reaching a “final solution” to
the crisis.
The meeting, which lasted about an hour,
came about after “a very kind invitation” by
Zelaya – said Corrales, the former head of
the Christian Democrats – and he attended it
with the aim of “exchanging” views on
certain matters “that have been on the
dialogue table.”
“We exchanged information about what had
occurred at the dialogue table. He asked me
questions, I gave him my views, he gave me
his views, in a very Honduran fashion, very
friendly, very broad, very much with an eye
toward the future,” the businessman said
without providing any further details about
what they discussed.
Corrales said only that “this information
will be an essential part of the final
solution to the country’s situation.”
“We’re persisting (on finding) the solution
the country” needs to emerge from the
crisis, Corrales emphasized, adding that
“the dialogue has not ended at any time,”
although it has been suspended since Monday,
when Zelaya’s negotiating committee rejected
a proposal by Micheletti.
The de facto president’s representative
attended the meeting with Zelaya’s private
secretary and the former president of the
National Telecommunications Commission, Raul
Valladares.
The head of Zelaya’s negotiating committee,
his interior minister, Victor Meza,
acknowledged to reporters that he had not
known about the meeting with Corrales, but
he felt it was a valid move within the
context of the dialogue on the political
crisis the country has been experiencing
since Zelaya was expelled from the country
by the military on June 28.
“It doesn’t surprise me. Dialogue requires
communication between the valid
interlocutors,” who are Zelaya and
Micheletti, he said.
Meza said that “the dialogue is at a moment
of stagnation that can be unblocked with an
intelligent proposal.”
He went on to say that any proposal has to
be “constructive, (and) have avenues for
solution,” but “silly” proposals cannot be
accepted “like the one ... presented on
Friday” by Micheletti’s representatives for
the two parties to accept a report by
Congress and the Supreme Court discussing
the antecedents of the coup.
Meza told Efe that Zelaya’s committee would
be ready to accept “new elements” not
included in the San Jose Accord proposed by
Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, “provided
that they enrich and develop the spirit of
the accord.”
Talks between representatives of Zelaya and
the de facto regime are deadlocked and the
ousted head of state is again appealing to
the Organization of American States to
increase pressure on the coup government.
The Zelaya delegation dismissed as
“insulting” a proposal from Micheletti that
the question of the elected president’s
reinstatement be decided on the basis of
reports from Congress and the Supreme Court
– the very institutions that have sought to
provide a veneer of legality for the June 28
putsch.
Micheletti’s delegates presented the
initiative as a sort of compromise between
their original proposal, which called for
the high court to rule on Zelaya’s
restoration, and the ousted president’s
suggestion that Congress pass a resolution
rescinding its earlier blessing for his
ouster.
By seeking to condition the head of state’s
return to office on pronouncements from
Congress and the Supreme Court, “they ask us
to acknowledge there was no coup d’etat,”
Meza had told a press conference in
Tegucigalpa.
“We will not meet again until we have a
constructive and serious proposal” from the
Micheletti camp, Meza said.
“The dialogue – though we don’t declare it
broken, nor are we thinking of breaking it –
has entered a phase of obvious obstruction,”
Zelaya’s team said in a statement.
Zelaya, the statement said, “has made every
possible concession to ensure the success of
the dialogue and a political solution to the
crisis.”
“Thanks to that, we have been able to reach
consensus on and sign 95 percent of the San
Jose Accord,” the plan drawn up by Costa
Rican President Oscar Arias that forms the
basis of the talks launched Oct. 7.
Agreement on the remaining 5 percent of the
accord “depends exclusively on the political
will of Mr. Micheletti,” Meza said, reading
from the statement.
“Without a political solution, the crisis
tends to grow more acute,” Meza said,
warning of the possibility for “social
convulsion” and accusing of Micheletti of
stalling to “prolong his illegal and
arbitrary tenure.”
More than a dozen Zelaya supporters have
been killed by security forces since the
coup and reports of human rights violations
are widespread.
Zelaya’s delegation said the OAS Permanent
Council, due to meet Wednesday in
Washington, should speak out on the impasse
in Tegucigalpa.
Zelaya, who slipped back into the country on
Sept. 21 and remains housed at the Brazilian
Embassy in Tegucigalpa, has agreed to
preside over a national-unity government for
the balance of his term, which ends in
January.
He has also pledged to abandon his push for
constitutional reform, an initiative
bitterly opposed by the military, the
political establishment and the few dozen
families who dominate the Honduran economy.
The Micheletti camp contends Zelaya’s ouster
was not a coup, insisting that the soldiers
who dragged him from the presidential palace
and put him on a plane to Costa Rica were
simply enforcing a Supreme Court ban on the
president’s planned non-binding plebiscite
on the idea of revising the constitution.
Though the coup leaders accuse Zelaya of
seeking to extend his stay in office, any
potential constitutional change to allow
presidential re-election would not have
taken place until well after the incumbent
stepped down.
Time is running out to settle the conflict
before the Nov. 29 presidential elections,
as both the European Union and Washington
have said they will not recognize the winner
of that balloting unless Zelaya is restored
to office beforehand. EFE
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