Honduran mediation moves wobble, rivals dig in
TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Diplomatic efforts to solve Honduras' crisis after last month's coup stumbled on Friday, as leftist allies of the ousted president vowed he would return and the interim government showed no sign of budging.
Deposed President Manuel Zelaya stepped up a campaign on Friday to rally international support for his reinstatement, and one of his most vocal backers, Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez, said Zelaya would return home "by any means."
Zelaya, and the man put in his place by the June 28 coup, Roberto Micheletti, failed to reach any accord or even meet face-to-face in mediation talks in Costa Rica on Thursday.
They left behind low-level delegations to try to advance a dialogue, but there appeared to be little progress on Friday and hopes seemed to be fading for a quick solution to the crisis in Honduras, one of the poorest states in the Americas.
Venezuela's firebrand leader Chavez pronounced the Costa Rica talks "dead before they started." He called for a total trade embargo on Honduras.
Speaking in Caracas, Chavez also criticized U.S. President Barack Obama's administration for engineering the talks mediated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, saying there could be no negotiations with "a usurper" in Honduras.
Chavez' comments seemed likely to rekindle fears that he and other leftist allies of Zelaya, like Cuba and Nicaragua, might seek to help the ousted president regain office by force or by popular insurrection.
Zelaya, who made an abortive Chavez-backed attempt to fly home last Sunday and has been advised by Washington to negotiate rather than try to force the issue again, said he was working on "peaceful, non-violent methods" to return to office.
The ousted president declined to reveal what other actions he planned, saying "I'm not going to tell my strategies to the press any more." But unlike Chavez, Zelaya was full of praise for the Obama administration.
He was speaking in the Dominican Republic and was due travel to Guatemala on Saturday before returning to Washington.
Honduran soldiers blocked the runway when Zelaya tried to return home in a plane provided by Chavez last Sunday. At least one person was killed when the troops clashed with pro-Zelaya protestors.
"LOT OF INTRANSIGENCE"
Zelaya, whose stance is backed by the Organisation of American States, the United States and the United Nations, says only his reinstatement can solve the crisis in his coffee and textile exporting country.
Micheletti, who was appointed by Honduras' Congress after the coup, says Zelaya's removal was lawful because he violated the constitution by trying to lift presidential term limits. He says if the ousted president returns he will face charges.
"The truth is that there is still a lot of intransigence on both sides," OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza told local radio in Chile on Friday.
Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernandez said in Santo Domingo he and Zelaya had discussed seeking resolutions backing Zelaya's return to power from leaders at a Non-Aligned Summit in Egypt next week and also from the African Union.
"As long as my return doesn't happen, everything that regime (headed by Micheletti) does, is void and is a crime," Zelaya told a news conference in Santo Domingo.
"With the whole world backing (Zelaya), we don't know how this de facto government can sustain itself," Fernandez said.
Concerned that the crisis could flare into a conflict in Central America, Obama's government quickly threw its weight behind a mediation effort by Arias, a veteran peacemaker.
Arias, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for helping resolve Central America's Cold War conflicts of the 1980s, is now trying to mediate the worst regional crisis since that period. He has warned a settlement could take some time.
Chavez slammed Arias for holding talks in Costa Rica with Micheletti. "How horrible to see a legitimate president receiving an usurper," he said.
Speaking in Santo Domingo, Zelaya however had fulsome praise for Obama's administration, which he said had broken with Washington's past record in Latin America of supporting coups and military regimes to firmly condemn his own ouster.
Zelaya, who had angered his country's ruling elite and military by increasingly allying himself with leftist allies like Chavez, called Obama's government a "tutor of democracy."
A CID-Gallup poll published in Honduran media on Thursday showed 41 percent of Hondurans thought that Zelaya's ouster was justified versus 28 percent who opposed the coup.
(Additional reporting by Frank Jack Daniel in Caracas, Patrick Markey in San Jose and Manuel Jimenez in Santo Domingo, Writing by Pascal Fletcher and Dan Trotta; Editing by Frances Kerry)