Costa Rica's Arias Warns Honduran Elections
Won't Be Recognized Under Interim Government
By Jennifer Kay, AP
CORAL GABLES, Fla. - Costa Rica's President
Oscar Arias on Tuesday commended the interim
president of Honduras for saying he will
reverse an emergency decree suspending civil
liberties in Honduras.
But he warned that the results of the
upcoming Nov. 29 presidential election in
Honduras would not be internationally
recognized if it is held while interim
President Robert Micheletti's government is
in charge.
Arias said Micheletti's government "has not
moved an inch" in negotiations to return
ousted President Manuel Zelaya with limited
authority.
He called the June 28 coup that propelled
Micheletti to power a "dramatic, historical
backward step" that needs to be corrected
through free and transparent elections under
Zelaya's government.
"It's the assurance of the continuity of
democracy in Latin America," Arias said.
"The cost of failure of leaving a coup
d'etat unpunished is setting up a bad
precedent for the region."
Arias spoke at the Americas Conference, a
business and political forum hosted by The
Miami Herald.
Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate,
brokered a plan to reinstate Zelaya, but
Micheletti's government refused to accept
it. He said his San Jose Accord could be
modified, but it was "the only thing on the
table right now."
"You could have remembrances of a bad Latin
American past, insisting on elections under
these circumstances and overlooking items in
the San Jose Accord," Arias said, addressing
the conference in Spanish.
Micheletti said late Monday that he would
accept congressional calls for him to
reverse the emergency decree he had
announced on Sunday. He also said he would
allow an Organization of American States
team, whose arrival was blocked this
weekend, into Honduras. The OAS hopes to
convince the coup leaders to bow to
international demands to reinstate Zelaya,
who was arrested and expelled from the
country in June.
The interim government had said the decree
suspending freedoms of speech and assembly
was needed to counter calls for an uprising
by Zelaya's supporters.
Zelaya has been holed up at the Brazilian
Embassy in the Honduran capital,
Tegucigalpa, since sneaking back into his
country Sept. 21.
Arias said the June 28 coup was the result
of Central America's governments spending
more money on their militaries than on their
schools or on fighting poverty.
Also to blame was the Honduran constitution,
he said. He called it "the worst in the
entire world" and "an invitation to coups."
It lacks an impeachment process, "so I
imagine the only way of calling the
president to account was to oust him," he
said. "This is something that will have to
be resolved, and the best way to do this is,
if we can't have a constitutional election,
is to have certain reforms so this Honduran
constitution ceases to be the worst in the
entire world."
Former President Bill Clinton, the U.N.
Special Envoy to Haiti, addressed the
conference later Tuesday.
Days before he leads a trade delegation to
Haiti to encourage investment there, he
called for more co-ordination between
reforestation, storm mitigation and economic
development programs in the impoverished
Caribbean country. He said helping Haiti
will help stabilize the Caribbean and the
rest of Latin America.
Clinton also voiced his support for granting
temporary protected status to Haitians
living illegally in the U.S. The protection
allows eligible immigrants to stay and work
in the U.S. when they cannot return home
because of an ongoing conflict,
environmental disaster or other temporary
conditions.
"I am pushing for that hard," he said,
adding that his wife, Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton, agreed with him. The
Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile,
continues to deport Haitians and discourages
them from trying to reach U.S. shores
illegally.
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