Honduran Rivals Leave Negotiations Without Meeting Face to Face
Friday, July 10th, 2009
Prospects for a quick resolution of the political crisis in Honduras were thrown into doubt Thursday, as the two men claiming their nation’s presidency left negotiations only hours after they had begun and showed no signs of budging from the positions that have divided the country.
Both men had come here to discuss ways of breaking the standoff at the behest of President Óscar Arias of Costa Rica, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who helped guide Central America out of its cold war conflicts.
But in the end, the two rivals — Manuel Zelaya, the ousted Honduran president, and Roberto Micheletti, the man who succeeded him at the helm of the nation’s de facto government — left the talks at Mr. Arias’s home without meeting face to face, a move Mr. Arias had hoped might help soften their positions.
“The fact that Mr. Micheletti is leaving and that he wouldn’t sit down face to face with Zelaya is bad news,” said Kevin Casas-Zamora, a former vice president of Costa Rica who is now at the Brookings Institution. “What’s the point of the talks, if they’re not going to talk?”
A spokeswoman for Mr. Arias said the president, a veteran at moving political mountains, was far from discouraged. She said that the fact the two sides had agreed to talk was itself a sign of progress, that President Arias had frank and open discussions with both Mr. Zelaya and Mr. Micheletti, and that although both men refused to meet face to face, their delegations met through much of the evening. (more…)
