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TEGUCIGALPA : Rivals in the four-month crisis in Honduras must reach an accord to ensure international support for presidential elections next month, a top US envoy said here.
Negotiators for ousted President Manuel Zelaya and de facto leader Roberto Micheletti returned to the table Thursday, as security forces once again used batons and tear gas against hundreds of pro-Zelaya protesters.
Talks on the crisis which has polarized and isolated Honduras are blocked over the return to power of Zelaya, who is holed up in the Brazilian embassy, before polls for a new president on November 29.
"Without a deal it will be difficult for the inter-American community to support the elections," Thomas Shannon, the US assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, told a news conference here in Spanish.
"The solution is on the table," Shannon said, referring to the once-rejected San Jose peace accord, which calls for Zelaya's reinstatement as a base for negotiations.
That deal also calls for a national unity government and a promise that Zelaya will drop his plans to try to change the constitution which angered the country's elite and led to the coup.
Envoys for Micheletti appeared to soften their stance as they said they accepted that Congress, rather than the Supreme Court, could decide on Zelaya's return, as the ousted leader has requested.
Micheletti, however, also accused Zelaya of seeking to attack him and top members of the regime.
"We have information that... they're seeking people from Nicaragua and Colombia to attack us," Micheletti said.
Hundreds of Zelaya supporters, who have been blocked from demonstrating by a clampdown on civil liberties, faced off with police and soldiers in various parts of the capital Tegucigalpa.
"We have several injured and at least 10 have been detained," resistance leader Rafael Alegria told AFP.
The Supreme Electoral Tribunal meanwhile took over control of the armed forces, as the de facto leaders pushed for the November polls to go ahead.
Some 12,000 armed forces were charged with distributing ballot boxes for around 4.5 million voters.
The electoral process would not be disrupted, Micheletti said, adding that "without elections there is simply no democracy."
Around 14,000 police were due to provide security in the face of threats of a boycott by Zelaya supporters.
Shannon said that Honduras needed to regain foreign support to legitimize the polls.
"This type of support will ensure not only that it (the election) takes place peacefully, but also the reintegration in the international community and reopening the doors of international financial institutions," Shannon said.
The United States, European Union and International Monetary Fund applied aid freezes to impoverished Honduras after the June 28 coup.
The United Nations and the Organization of American States (OAS) have said they will not monitor the polls until normalcy is restored.
"The situation is not normal in Honduras and the worst is that it won't be (normal) despite the elections," OAS chief Jose Miguel Insulza told AFP in Washington Thursday.
Shannon and his delegation were due to leave Tegucigalpa on Friday.
Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who is behind the proposed accord, said Thursday in Panama that he hoped for something new following the US visit.
"I long for them to comply with our recommendations, which would mean reversing a coup for the first time in Latin American history," Arias said.
- AFP/vm
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