Honduras rivals meet mediator in coup crisis talks

By Patrick Markey and Ana Isabel Martinez

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (Reuters) - Costa Rica's president held mediation talks on Thursday with the rivals for power in Honduras as international pressure grew for the return of ousted President Manuel Zelaya after last month's coup.

President Oscar Arias held separate meetings at his residence first with Zelaya, and then with Roberto Micheletti, the interim president installed by Honduras' Congress after the June 28 coup.

Costa Rican officials said Arias hoped to bring the two together later for their first face-to-face meeting since Zelaya's overthrow, which stoked tensions in Central America and posed a diplomatic test for U.S. President Barack Obama.

Arias won the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize for helping to solve Cold War conflicts in Central America.

The United States and the Organization of American States are pressing for Zelaya's peaceful reinstatement, which OAS chief Jose Miguel Insulza said was the key for a successful outcome to the talks in the Costa Rican capital San Jose.

"The stumbling block is that the de facto government accept the return of the constitutional government," Insulza told reporters in Washington. "Everything else is negotiable."

But it remained to be seen whether Micheletti, the former head of Honduras' Congress picked by the assembly to replace Zelaya, would be willing to accept him back as president.

In the run up to the talks, Micheletti had insisted Zelaya's removal was lawful because he violated the constitution by seeking to lift presidential term limits. Micheletti said on Thursday he was ready to work for a solution "within the framework of the constitution."

After meeting separately with Arias, Zelaya stressed that both the OAS and the United Nations General Assembly had called for his reinstatement. On Wednesday, Zelaya called Micheletti a "criminal" and said he was guilty of treason.

Insulza said that provided Zelaya's restoration was accepted, other options, like bringing forward scheduled November presidential elections, forming a national unity government, or agreeing on an amnesty, were all open to negotiation.

For the OAS, which suspended Honduras on Saturday, early elections would be acceptable only if held after Zelaya is restored and not under Micheletti, Insulza said.

U.S. SUSPENDS MILITARY AID

Zelaya, who was elected in 2005 and was due to leave office in 2010, wants those who toppled him to give up power in 24 hours to allow his reinstatement as president of the coffee and textile exporting country, one of the poorest in the Americas

Zelaya, a logging magnate who was elected as a moderate, had angered his country's ruling elite and military by increasingly allying himself with Venezuela's firebrand leftist President Hugo Chavez, a fierce critic of U.S. policies.

Honduran media on Thursday published a poll showing that 41 percent of Hondurans thought that Zelaya's ouster was justified. The CID-Gallup poll carried out between June 30 and July 4 found 28 percent of those interviewed opposed the coup.