New complications hit talks to end Honduran crisis

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — U.S.-backed talks to resolve a standoff over Honduras' coup faced new difficulties even before they began on Thursday as the sides seemed to harden their positions. The toppled president insists he must return. The interim leaders say he cannot.

Aides to interim leader Roberto Micheletti said he does not even plan to meet personally with ousted President Manuel Zelaya and they accused Zelaya's followers of gathering in San Jose to "create tension" during the talks.

Zelaya, meanwhile, said he's not here to negotiate but to arrange his return to power, while Micheletti insists his reinstatement is not negotiable. And even the host of the talks sought to dampen expectations of a quick fix to the crisis, despite star backing for the meetings scheduled to start late Thursday.

Costa Rica's president, Nobel laureate Oscar Arias, is mediating at the request of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. But that may not be enough to end a crisis some consider the Obama administration's first big test in Latin America.

"At this time, it is not foreseen that President Micheletti would meet with Zelaya, because the meetings are separate," Defense Minister Adolfo Lionel Sevilla told the HRN radio station. "The meetings are bilateral and individual, between President Micheletti and his Costa Rican host," Arias.

And Micheletti's information minister, Rene Zepeda, told The Associated Press that pro-Zelaya activists were gathering Costa Rica "to create tension during the talks."

Only a few Zelaya supporters were seen publicly holding vigils or banners in downtown San Jose Wednesday.

Even the host of Thursday's talks sought to dampen expectations of a quick fix to the crisis. "In two days there could be a solution or it could be that in two months there is no solution," said Arias, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his role in mediating civil wars in Central America.

But he added that usually once talks start, "positions begin to soften."

The sides couldn't be much farther apart.

On arriving at San Jose's airport late Wednesday, Zelaya told reporters that he plans to "listen to the de facto government explain how they plan to leave" and expects them out in 24 hours.

Zelaya, a leftist who was toppled by the military and flown out of Honduras on June 28, said he wasn't in Costa Rica to negotiate because doing so "would be like inviting to dialogue someone who violated your family."