FACTBOX-Key facts about crisis-hit Honduras

July 14 (Reuters) - The United States and mediator Costa Rica urged rival sides in Honduras' political crisis on Tuesday to give talks a chance after the ousted president threatened to abandon dialogue if he was not reinstated quickly. [ID:nN14327746]

Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for helping end Cold War-era Central American conflicts, is trying to resolve the stalemate between deposed President Manuel Zelaya and the interim leadership behind the army coup.

Here are some key facts about Honduras:

* Honduras is the second-largest country in Central America after Nicaragua with a population of 7.2 million. It is bordered by Guatemala to the north and west, El Salvador to the southwest and Nicaragua to the southeast.

* An ally of the United States during the Cold War, Honduras moved closer to socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez after Zelaya took power in 2006.

* European explorer Christopher Columbus first sighted the country in 1502 and named it Honduras, meaning "depths" in Spanish, after its coastal waters.

* Honduras, a member of the U.S.-Central American Free Trade Act, suffers from massive unemployment and is one of the poorest countries in Latin America, relying on money from Hondurans living in the United States for more than 25 percent of its gross domestic product.

* An exporter of coffee and bananas, the country has attracted textile and mining investment over the past decade as it seeks to diversify its economy away from agriculture.

* Prior to the crisis, the government said it expected the Honduran economy to grow less than 2 percent this year as the global economic crisis hurts exports, remittances and tourism.

* The economy was devastated in 1998 by Hurricane Mitch, which killed 13,500 people across Central America and caused $5 billion in damage. (Reporting by Gustavo Palencia in Tegucigalpa)