High-stakes talks were due to take place yesterday between the delegations of Honduran interim leader Roberto Micheletti and ousted president Manuel Zelaya to resolve the crisis sparked by last month’s military-backed coup.
Costa Rican President Oscar Arias appealed for more time to resolve the issues after Micheletti left San Jose on Thursday without meeting Zelaya face-to-face as expected.
The talks were set to continue without the leaders, however, with negotiators from both parties aiming to find middle ground between the congress-appointed new president, who insists he will stay in power, and the elected president, who is urging his reinstatement.
PHOTO: EPA
On Thursday first Zelaya, then Micheletti spoke separately to the mediator Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, at his home here.
“I feel satisfied because a sincere, clear dialogue has been initiated, but still, the positions are very different and certainly these things ... take time, they require patience,” Arias said. “This could possibly take more time than imagined.”
Costa Rica’s Foreign Minister Bruno Stagno said the delegations had already agreed that the Honduran Constitution should be the point of reference for the process, and that the current situation in Honduras is “unsustainable.”
On his return to Tegucigalpa, Micheletti said he was ready to return to talks “if necessary,” after earlier saying he was going back to Honduras “totally satisfied.”
“If I am invited by President Arias, I will return with great pleasure,” Micheletti said, after leaving a working team of four negotiators behind in San Jose.
Zelaya was expected to travel on to Guatemala and the Dominican Republic yesterday to drum up support, meeting with presidents Alvaro Colom and Leonel Fernandez under the auspices of the Central American Integration System.
Honduras has been roiled by protests since June 28, when Zelaya was abducted by the army and forcibly deported.
“We have made the first step,” Zelaya said after his meeting. “President Arias heard my position and that of the union and political representatives with me, which is the immediate restoration of the elected president.”
The US has suspended military ties with Tegucigalpa and is warning it could sever US$200 million in aid. The World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank have frozen credit lines.
Zelaya’s left-wing allies have also made life uncomfortable for Micheletti. Venezuela has suspended its oil deliveries to Honduras, while Nicaragua denied Micheletti permission to fly through its airspace for the Costa Rica meeting.
Amid the tension, there was speculation that a door was open to a possible solution.
The Honduran Supreme Court said ahead of the talks that if the congress granted Zelaya amnesty, he could return to Honduras without fearing an arrest warrant for treason issued against him.
Some Honduran lawmakers said they were open to an amnesty.
“It would be an acceptable formula to bring peace to the country,” Christian Democrat lawmaker Anibal Solis said.
But most Honduran business leaders opposed Zelaya’s return.
“There has been an irreversible democratic transition in Honduras, and we’re going to have to stick together to create jobs in the teeth of the global crisis and if there is international isolation,” said Adolfo Facusse, an employers’ federation chief.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
Hong Kong microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung (袁國勇) has done battle with some of the world’s worst threats, including the SARS virus he helped isolate and identify, and he has a warning. Another pandemic is inevitable and could exact damage far worse than COVID-19 pandemic, said the soft-spoken scientist sometimes thought of as Hong Kong’s answer to former US National Institutes of Health director Anthony Fauci. “Both the public and [world] leaders must admit that another pandemic will come, and probably sooner than you anticipate,” he said at the city’s Queen Mary Hospital, where he works and teaches. “Why I make such a horrifying prediction
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
INDICTED: US prosecutors said Sue Mi Terry accepted fancy handbags, luxury dinners and thousands of dollars in payments from South Korean intelligence A former CIA employee and senior official at the US National Security Council has been charged with allegedly serving as a secret agent for the South Korean National Intelligence Service, the US Department of Justice said. Sue Mi Terry accepted luxury goods, including fancy handbags, and expensive dinners at sushi restaurants in exchange for advocating South Korean government positions during media appearances, sharing nonpublic information with intelligence officers and facilitating access for South Korean officials to US government officials, an indictment filed in federal court in Manhattan, New York, says. She also admitted to the FBI that she served as a source