Interim Honduran leader resists diplomats' pleas

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Honduras' coup-installed leader is resisting calls by diplomats from across the hemisphere to reinstate ousted President Manuel Zelaya, at one point angrily telling the visitors they "don't know the truth or don't want to know it."

During sometimes confrontational talks with interim President Roberto Micheletti and his ministers, representatives from the United States, Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean took turns on Wednesday urging the Micheletti camp to reconsider its position, but no breakthroughs were announced.

"Today we saw Hondurans sitting together, working on a Honduran solution," Ronald Robinson, a Jamaican representing the Caribbean Community, said during one session of talks with Honduran representatives. "For me, I thought it was a good step in the right direction."

The June 28 military-backed coup that toppled Zelaya has paralyzed this impoverished Central American nation with street protests, foreign aid cuts, diplomatic isolation and a standoff between rival claimants to the presidency. The crisis deepened when Zelaya slipped back into the country in late September and took refuge with dozens of supporters in the Brazilian Embassy.

Wednesday's negotiations began behind closed doors with representatives of Zelaya and the interim government in the Honduran capital, but exploded into the open later in the day with a televised confrontation between Micheletti and the foreign envoys in the presidential palace.

Micheletti, his voice bristling with rage, scolded the diplomats for refusing to recognize what he insisted was the lawful removal of Zelaya under the Honduran constitution and for isolating his country and suspending aid to one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.

"You don't know the truth or you don't want to know it," Micheletti said. "You don't want to know what happened before June 28."

He urged them to "reflect on the damage you are doing to a country that has done nothing to you."

The diplomats sat stone-faced, a few rubbing their eyes in apparent fatigue during his outburst. Canada's minister of state for the Americas, Peter Kent, told Micheletti that the international community respects the Honduran constitution, but it oppose the military's ouster of Zelaya.

"However it happened, a mistake was made on June 28," Kent said. "A democratically elected leader, whatever his behavior in recent years, was undemocratically removed."