国际英语新闻：Ousted Honduran president rejects negotiations with coup leaders

SANTIAGO, July 8 (Xinhua) -- Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya said on Wednesday that he will not negotiate with the post-coup authorities in his country during an upcoming mediation process led by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias.

    Speaking to Chilean TV channel "24 Horas," Zelaya said that post-coup leader Roberto Micheletti was "brute," so were his coup d'etat, his "murders" and "violations to the human rights."

    Zelaya said Micheletti's betrayal and all what he has done are "crimes that do not expire."

    Zelaya also said that he "does not have any problem" with advancing the elections, "but (only) in a regime of respect." He also said that he will not abandon political activity.

    "If my crime is to fight for the justice, I am guilty," Zelaya said, adding that the coup against him "set a deep mark of backlash." He said that even if he could forgive Micheletti, the former president of the Honduran Congress, "history will not forgive him."

    Zelaya, making allusion to former Chilean president Salvador Allende, who died in a military coup in the 1970s, said that "the military coups threaten the democracy of Latin America."

    The mediation for the Honduran political crisis is scheduled to start at 11:00 a.m. local time (1700 GMT) on Thursday in Arias' residence in San Jose, capital of Costa Rica.