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CENTRAL AMERICA |
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U.S. Urges Quick Settlement in Honduras
TEGUCIGALPA – The United States’ top
diplomat for Latin America warned on
Thursday of the need for a rapid resolution
of the crisis that began with the June 28
ouster of Honduran President Mel Zelaya.
“In terms of the national dialogue, time is
already running out, we have only a month
before the elections of Nov. 29,” Thomas
Shannon, the assistant secretary of state
for Western Hemisphere affairs, told a press
conference in Tegucigalpa.
“So, from the point of view of the United
States and of the international community,
we need an accord as quickly as possible,”
he said in Spanish.
Shannon also announced that he and the two
other senior U.S. officials who accompanied
him to Tegucigalpa would remain in Honduras
until Friday, a day longer than originally
scheduled, to observe the dialogue between
representatives of Zelaya and the current
head of the government, Roberto Micheletti.
“We are not here to impose anything,”
Shannon said. “We are here to show interest
and, to the extent that we can, to help the
negotiators and the political leaders reach
an accord, which is necessary not only for
Honduras but for the international
community.”
“This Honduran crisis requires a Honduran
solution,” he said.
Regarding the resumption of talks Thursday
between delegates for Zelaya and Micheletti,
Shannon said he was hopeful the dialogue
would succeed.
“The solution is on the table,” he said.
“It’s not a question of editing, it’s not a
question of proposals: it’s a question of
political will.”
Shannon said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton sent him and his colleagues to
Honduras “to give guarantees that any accord
which might arise from the dialogue would be
respected and implemented in a transparent
and effective manner.”
“In our view, an agreement within the
national dialogue opens a large space for
members of the international community to
assist Honduras in this election process, to
observe the elections and to have a process
that is peaceful and which produces a
leadership that is widely recognized
throughout the hemisphere as legitimate,” he
said.
“Without a deal,” Shannon added, “it will be
difficult for the inter-American community
to support the elections.”
Talks between representatives of Zelaya and
the current government broke down last
weekend over Zelaya's insistence on being
reinstated and the Honduras government's
unwillingness to accept his return to power.
In the eyes of Constituional scholars and
most Hondurans, Zelaya’s ouster was not a
coup. The soldiers who escorted Zelaya from
the presidential palace were enforcing a
Supreme Court order after Zelaya refused to
comply with their earlier order banning his
planned referendum on revising the
constitution to allow for unlimited
presidential terms. The Constitution calls
for immediate disempowerment of any official
who does so.
Article 239 of the Honduran Constitution
says “Any citizen who has already served as
head of the Executive Branch cannot be
President or Vice-President again. Whoever
violates this law or proposes its reform, as
well as those who support such violation
directly or indirectly, must immediately
cease in their functions and will be unable
to hold any public office for a period of 10
years.”
In August, the U.S. Congress Law Library
issued a report that calls the
disempowerment of Zelaya, with the exception
of the removal of Zelaya from the country,
constitutional under Honduran law.
According to report author Norma Gutiérrez,
the Honduran Congress has the power to
"disapprove of the conduct of the
president".
The Congress "implicitly exercised its power
of constitutional interpretation in the case
of Zelaya when it decided that its power to
'disapprove' the president's actions
encompassed the power to remove him", the
report says.
Even Zelaya's own political party voted to
remove him.
Zelaya, who slipped back into the country on
Sept. 21 and remains holed up at the
Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, claims he
has made numerous concessions to achieve an
accord with Micheletti.
However, Zelaya’s delegation to the talks
has remained steadfastly opposed to
Micheletti’s suggestion that both men step
aside in favor of an interim president.
Mayra Mejia, a member of the ousted
president’s camp, said last Friday that “if
the coup d’etat can’t be reversed, no
democracy in Central America and Latin
America can be at ease, because (putschists)
will find an ideal, simple path: stage a
coup and whitewash it later with an
election.”
In the meantime, the Organization of
American States, the United States and the
European Union have been pressing the
Honduras government to accept the San Jose
Accord, a proposal put forward by Costa
Rican President Oscar Arias.
The plan calls for Zelaya to return and lead
a national unity government for the few
months left in his term, and for a political
amnesty that would protect both sides in the
dispute.
Time is running out before presidential
elections scheduled for Nov. 29, as both the
European Union and Washington have said they
will not recognize the winner of that
balloting unless Zelaya is restored to
office beforehand. Elections have
traditionally been the only way that coups
and changes of government have been
peacefully resolved in Latin American
history.
According to US Congressman Eliot Engel,
Chairman of the US House of Representative
Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western
Hemisphere, “The presidential candidates in
Honduras have asked the Organization of
American States (OAS) to provide
international observers for the country’s
November 29th election. I urge OAS Secretary
General Jose Miguel Insulza to grant this
request, so that an effective election
monitoring effort can be put into place.” |
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