SAN JOSE, Costa Rica, (Reuters) – The rivals for  power in Honduras agreed yesterday to hold more talks to seek a  solution to the crisis created by last month’s coup, keeping  alive hopes that dialogue would prevail over confrontation.

The talks’ mediator, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias,  made the announcement after chairing a first round of  discussions between teams representing ousted Honduran  President Manuel Zelaya and the man put in his place by the  June 28 coup, Roberto Micheletti. “Both sides have agreed to continue talks in the shortest  time possible and not rest until they reach an agreement to  resolve this crisis,” Arias told reporters in the Costa Rican  capital San Jose, saying the date for the next meeting would be  set in coming days.     Both sides had committed to solving the dispute with “words  not gunpowder”, he said, but the task could be tough to  reconcile the entrenched positions of the parties.

Mediator Arias won a Nobel Peace Prize for helping resolve  Central America’s Cold War conflicts of the 1980s. While the Organiza-tion of American States and U.S.  President Barack Obama’s administration have thrown their  weight behind Arias’ mediation, leftist Venezuelan President  Hugo Chavez condemned the Costa Rica talks as “dead before they  started”. He called for a total trade embargo on Honduras. Chavez said Zelaya, who had angered his country’s ruling  elite and military by increasingly allying himself with the  Venezuelan leader, was determined to return to his country “by  air, land, I don’t know where, but he’s going to enter”.

In a contrasting view of the Costa Rica talks, U.N.  General Assembly president Miguel D’Escoto yesterday expressed  optimism over a solution to restore Zelaya to office. “I hear we may be very close to a solution for the  restitution of President Zelaya,” D’Escoto told a U.N. news  conference, saying his belief was based on “conversations”.

But Micheletti, installed by Honduras’ Congress after the  coup, has shown no signs of yielding to international pressure  to give power back to Zelaya. He has said if Zelaya returns it  will be to face justice, arguing the deposed president violated  the constitution by trying to scrap presidential term limits.