In this paper we consider the problem of the distributed deadlock resolution. Starting from a high level specification of the problem and the resolution algorithm for a system with single request model, we provide successive levels of decreasing abstraction of the initial specification in order to achieve a solution in a complete distributed system. The successive refinements and the final distributed deadlock resolution algorithm are formaly described and proved by using the Input-Output Automata Model. The proposed solution is a modification of the algorithms in Mitchell and Merritt (1984) and Gonzalez de Mendívil et al. (1993) and preserves a similar message traffic to resolve a deadlock.