WASHINGTON — Senior Obama administration officials are scheduled to travel to Honduras this week in an effort to resolve a political crisis that began nearly four months ago when soldiers detained President Manuel Zelaya and forced him into exile.
President Manuel Zelaya has been holed up in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa.
This will be the first time since the coup that the Obama administration has taken a leading role in pressuring the leaders of the de facto government to restore democratic order in Honduras. The stepped-up pressure comes after months of apparently fruitless talks about whether Mr. Zelaya will be returned to power.
The new effort began on Friday, officials said, when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made calls to both Mr. Zelaya and the head of the de facto government, Roberto Micheletti.
In those calls, officials said, Mrs. Clinton told the two leaders that there was “increasing frustration” in the United States and Latin America over the deteriorating situation in Honduras, the hemisphere’s third-poorest country. She reserved her toughest comments for Mr. Micheletti, officials said, because the United States believes he has been “the most difficult.”
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