**The political crisis in Honduras appears to be closer to a resolution after negotiators reached a deal.**However few details are known of the deal which has yet to be approved by ousted President Manuel Zelaya and interim President Roberto Micheletti.
Mr Zelaya was sent into exile in June, but has been inside Brazil’s embassy since secretly returning in September.
He wants to be reinstated before 29 November elections, but the interim leaders have resisted his demands.
They say he was legally removed from office as he had violated the Honduran constitution.
Mr Zelaya’s lead negotiator Victor Meza said the two sides had “agreed on one unified text that will be discussed and analysed by President Zelaya and Mr Micheletti.”
The deal apparently covers all the disputed points between them, including the most contentious issue - whether Mr Zelaya returns to power to serve the three remaining months of his term.
‘Significant’ progress
“I wouldn’t talk of an end to the political crisis, but an exit, yes,” Mr Meza was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying.
The army chief, Romeo Vasquez, also said progress had been made.
“I know that we have advanced significantly, we are almost at the end of this crisis,” he told local radio HRN, Reuters reported.
Mr Zelaya set a deadline of Thursday for agreement to be reached.
“Elections without the reinstatement of the constitutional (elected) president would legitimise and authorise more coups in Honduras,” he told the AFP news agency before negotiators announced a deal had been reached.
“Reinstatement after the fact (vote) is something we will not accept.”
Mr Micheletti has repeatedly resisted calls for Mr Zelaya to be restored to office.
His position is that Mr Zelaya was removed according to the Honduran constitution, and that to reverse that decision would be illegal.
Disruption
Mr Zelaya was sent into exile on 28 June after trying to hold a vote on whether a constituent assembly should be set up to look at rewriting the constitution.
The vote was deemed in violation of the constitution by the Supreme Court.
Mr Zelaya’s opponents accused him of trying to lift the current ban on presidential re-election to remain in office - a charge he has repeatedly denied.
Some commentators point out that a new constitution allowing presidential re-election was unlikely to have been ready before January 2010, when Mr Zelaya’s term was due to end.
International sanctions against the interim government have cost Honduras, one of the region’s poorest nations, millions of dollars.
Curfews and restrictions on civil liberties have also disrupted the lives of ordinary Hondurans over the past four months.