Honduras: Ousted president 'meets govt official'

Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya said he has met an interim government official and begun dialogue aimed at ending the country’s protracted political crisis.

Mr Zelaya told Radio Globo that he met on Wednesday night with a representative of the temporary government that forced him out of Honduras at gunpoint on June 28, but he wouldn’t name the official.

In an interview with the radio station, Mr Zelaya said that the two sides made no progress, but he called the meeting “the beginning to find peaceful solutions”.

Mr Zelaya also met the four leading candidates competing in the presidential election this autumn and said that he plans to meet with business and social leaders this week.

Mr Zelaya has said that the November 29 election won’t be legitimate unless he is restored to office.

Mr Zelaya had been demanding to talk with interim President Roberto Micheletti since Monday when he sneaked back into the country and took shelter at the Brazilian Embassy.

Mr Micheletti’s government did not immediately comment.

Troops still surrounded the Embassy, where an increasingly exhausted Mr Zelaya, his family and about 70 supporters remained sheltered.

But life outside the gates of the two-story compound was almost back to normal yesterday: after days of paralysing curfews, most children returned to school, airplanes began landing at the airport, borders were open and downtown streets were again crammed with taxis, buses and vendors hawking newspapers, snacks and bubble gum.

“It feels excellent,” said Dagoberto Castillo, 27, a mechanic who opened his body-repair shop for the first time this week.

The government, however, declared a partial curfew for border areas and the northern industrial city of San Pedro Sula, the country’s second-largest city, from late yesterday until this morning.

Mr Zelaya was kicked out of Honduras after the Supreme Court endorsed charges of treason and abuse of authority against the leader for repeatedly ignoring court orders to drop plans for a referendum on whether the constitution should be rewritten.