AIDE: Zelaya Won't Accept Coup Leaders in Unity Gov't./NYT: Plan Wourld Return Honduran Leader [View All]

[magbana]

Two articles. Note second article from NYT mentions that Pinochettis reps in Costa Rica said they will need to take issues back to Tegucigalpa for review. Stall, stall, stall.
magbana

"Honduras Zelaya won't accept coup leaders in unity gov: aide
Sat Jul 18, 2009 7:20pm EDT

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya will not accept any leaders of the June 28 coup that ousted him forming part of an eventual unity government, a close adviser said on Saturday in an apparent step back from an earlier comment by Zelaya.

"The president can talk about a reconciliation government, but not one that includes people who took part in the coup," Allan Fajardo, a close adviser accompanying Zelaya in Managua told Reuters by telephone. "There can be no coupmongers."

He said Zelaya also agreed with the proposal that he be reinstated to serve out the rest of his term, but that other proposals by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias were still subject to negotiation.

Zelaya said earlier on Saturday he agreed with a proposal by mediator Costa Rica to form a national unity government, telling Radio Globo, "We agree with it, but only as long as all the powers of the state are integrated into it."

(Reporting by Simon Gardner; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE56H33D20090718

Plan Would Return Honduran Leader
Published: July 18, 2009

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — The mediator in talks seeking to break the deadlock between the deposed Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, and the de facto government that exiled him urged both sides on Saturday to agree to a plan that would return the ousted leader and grant a general amnesty.
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The seven points proposed by President Óscar Arias of Costa Rica during a second round of negotiations at his house in the capital, San José, would require the political elite of Honduras to recognize Mr. Zelaya as the country’s legitimate president, something they have refused to do until now.

But in restoring Mr. Zelaya, Mr. Arias’s plan would also sharply curtail his powers and focus much of the country’s political energy on the next election.

A source close to the talks said Mr. Zelaya’s delegation had agreed in principle to all seven points.

But prospects for an agreement appeared to dim late Saturday when a member of the delegation representing Roberto Micheletti, who was named by the Honduran Congress as president after the military arrested Mr. Zelaya and flew him to Costa Rica, said in a radio interview that the proposal still needed to be discussed in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital.

Under the proposal, the general election scheduled for the end of November would be moved forward a month and the military would be placed under the command of the electoral tribunal to prevent any attempt to meddle in the balloting.

Mr. Arias’s proposal would also force Mr. Zelaya to give up any attempt to rewrite the Constitution to remain in office.

Mr. Zelaya would head a national unity government made up of members of all political parties, until the new elected government took office, as scheduled, at the end of January.

The proposal does not specify that any members of the Micheletti government would be included, which Mr. Zelaya has ruled out.

Mr. Arias’s proposal would also grant an amnesty for all political crimes both before and after the June 28 ouster of Mr. Zelaya.

Four negotiators from each side began talks at 11 a.m. on Saturday at Mr. Arias’s house, pausing to eat lunch there and continuing into the late afternoon.

In a statement, Mr. Arias, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his role in negotiating Central American peace accords, spoke of the weight of history in a region where the overthrow of elected governments has frequently punctuated an uncertain transition to democracy.

If an agreement was reached, “it would be the first time in Latin American history that a coup d’état is reversed by the will of both sides,” the statement said.

To achieve a settlement, however, the de facto government — in which the military, Congress and the Supreme Court lined up against Mr. Zelaya — would have to reverse course and allow him to return.

Mr. Micheletti had said that he would step down if it would help end the conflict, but he had emphasized that he would not make way for Mr. Zelaya. The de facto government has said that if Mr. Zelaya did try to return, he would be arrested.

The United Nations, the Organization of American States and the Obama administration, however, have all said Mr. Zelaya is Honduras’s legal president.

During a news conference in Managua, Nicaragua, on Friday afternoon, Mr. Zelaya suggested how difficult it might be to reach an agreement on all the details even if Mr. Arias did succeed in negotiating the general outline of an accord.

The ousted president said he was open to the possibility of some kind of unity government, but that it could not include any of the ministers in the government that took power after the coup.

And he argued that Mr. Micheletti had refused to show any flexibility. “We have been waiting for 10 days for the coup leaders to give us a sign,” he said. “If they don’t give us one tomorrow, the process with them will have failed. Up to this moment there’s been no gesture on their part.”

The Honduran coup has presented an unexpected test of Latin American policy for the Obama administration, which has thrown its support behind the mediation effort by Mr. Arias.

Elisabeth Malkin reported from Ciudad Juárez, and Blake Schmidt from Granada, Nicaragua. Jesús Mora contributed reporting from San José, Costa Rica."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/world/americas/19honduras.html?_r=1&hp