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COSTA RICA |
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Arias: Honduras’ Coup Regime Blocking
Solution to Crisis
Costa Rican president, Oscar Arias, said on
Saturday that Honduras’ de facto government
is to blame for the ongoing political crisis
stemming from President Mel Zelaya’s ouster
in a late June coup.
“We’ve never found a willingness in the de
facto government to carry out what
originally was the San José accord and later
the Tegucigalpa-San José accord,” Arias and
one-time mediator in the Honduran political
crisis told reporters.
The Arias-proposed San José accord, which
was presented in July after a personal
meeting at his private home with both,
though separately, Zelaya and Micheletti,
and called for Zelaya to return to power at
the head of a national-unity government,
among other points, was rejected by the
Micheletti regime.
The “interim” government and Zelaya’s camp,
however, accepted the Tegucigalpa-San José
accord, a U.S.-brokered agreement signed
last week that includes many of Arias’
proposals but leaves the matter of Zelaya’s
reinstatement up to Congress.
But the text does not lay down a timeframe
for that process and the congressional
leadership has put off a debate, choosing
instead to first seek an advisory opinion
from the Supreme Court, the very institution
that has sought to give the coup a veneer of
legality.
Zelaya and his supporters maintain that the
installation of the national unity
government and undoing the putsch are
inextricably linked, but the Micheletti camp
insists on treating those things as separate
issues.
Soon after the midnight Thursday deadline
for installing the unity government,
Micheletti took to the Honduran airwaves to
unilaterally announce a new administration,
with himself at its head, made up of
candidates proposed by political parties and
other sectors of civil society.
Zelaya, who was dragged out of the
presidential palace on June 28 and put on a
plane to Costa Rica and now is holed up at
the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa after
slipping back into the country on Sept. 21,
responded Friday by pronouncing the accord
dead.
Regarding Micheletti’s decisions, Arias
said: “I’m not surprised, because the same
inflexibility in the discussions here in San
Jose is what we’ve found in Tegucigalpa when
dialogue began between the two sides.”
He added that he thinks the de facto regime
“is just looking to use delaying tactics and
(waiting) for time to pass until (the Nov.
29 elections), risking that the future
government won’t be recognized by some
countries.”
“With that, they’re doing nothing but harm
to the Honduran people, but it seems that
they keep insisting on doing them more harm
and that saddens me,” the 1987 Nobel Peace
Prize winner said.
Arias recalled that the essential point of
the San Jose Accord, which was backed by the
international community, was “to reverse the
coup and re-establish the constitutional
order” by restoring Zelaya to the
presidency.
On Saturday, Zelaya’s political adviser,
Rafael Tome said the Tegucigalpa-San Jose
Accord has been left “null and void” and
that dialogue with the de facto regime
“remains cut off.”
On Friday, the U.S. government expressed
disappointment over the breakdown in
implementation of the accord meant to end
the standoff between Zelaya and the de facto
regime.
“We urge both sides to act in the best
interests of the Honduran people and return
to the table immediately to reach agreement
on the formation of a unity government,”
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said
during his daily press briefing.
Kelly did not say explicitly whether U.S.
recognition of the winner of the Nov. 29
Honduran presidential election would depend
on Zelaya’s reinstatement.
Prior to the signing of the Tegucigalpa-San
Jose accord, the United States had
threatened not to recognize the winner of
the election unless the deposed leader was
reinstated beforehand.
But a top U.S. diplomat who brokered the
agreement said after it was inked that the
United States would accept the Honduran
Congress’ decision on the matter either way.
Micheletti has contended all along that
Zelaya’s ouster was not a coup, insisting
the soldiers who dragged him from the
presidential palace and put him on a plane
to Costa Rica were simply enforcing a
Supreme Court ban on the president’s planned
non-binding plebiscite on the idea of
revising the constitution.
But while the coup plotters accuse Zelaya of
seeking to extend his stay in office, any
potential constitutional change to allow
presidential re-election would not have
taken place until well after the incumbent
stepped down. |
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