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HONDURAS: Obama Declares Coup "Not Legal" Amid
Uncertainty
By
Jim Lobe*
WASHINGTON (IPS) - Capping a day of mixed signals,
U.S. President Barack Obama said late Monday that he
considered Sunday's ouster and exile of Honduran
President Manuel Zelaya to be "not legal" and that
Washington still considered him the legitimate
president of the Central American country.
Speaking at a very brief press appearance with
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, Obama referred to
Sunday's events as a "coup" and warned that, if
permitted to stand, it would constitute a "terrible
precedent" for the region.
"President Zelaya was democratically elected, he had
not yet completed his term," he said. "We believe
that the coup was not legal and that President
Zelaya remains the President of Honduras, the
democratically elected president there."
Obama spokes several hours after Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton had explicitly declined to label
Sunday's developments a "coup" or demand that Zelaya
be reported to his position as president. She
stressed that State Department lawyers were still
reviewing the situation to determine whether
Zelaya's ouster constituted the kind of action that
would require a suspension of U.S. assistance.
Under U.S. law, no aid can be disbursed to any
country "whose elected head of government has been
deposed by military coup or decree".
"We are withholding any formal legal determination,"
Clinton told a press briefing here.
Asked whether Washington is demanding Zelaya's
restoration, Clinton said: "We haven't laid out any
demands that we're insisting on, because we're
working with others on behalf of our ultimate
objectives."
Her remarks marked a striking contrast to those of
the secretary-general of the Organisation of
American States (OAS), Jose Miguel Insulza, who, at
a press conference here at OAS headquarters with
Salvadorean President Mauricio Funes, declared that
Zelaya's re-instatement as president was a
pre-condition for any successful resolution of the
two-day-old crisis.
The OAS, he said, will only be open to dialogue "if
it contemplates the return of President Zelaya to
his legitimate position."
Insulza, who will chair a special emergency meeting
of OAS foreign ministers on the situation here
Tuesday, also invoked Article 19 of the
Inter-American Democratic Charter which effectively
suspends any member country from taking part in
official OAS business if there is an
unconstitutional interruption of its democratic
order.
He said the situation required that the de facto
authorities in Tegucigalpa suffer "international
isolation" until the legitimate government is
restored.
The contrast between Clinton's remarks and those of
Insulza's suggested for the first time that at least
a temporary gap has opened between the United States
and most, if not all, of Latin America as to how
they should react to the crisis in Honduras, whose
Congress Sunday elected Roberto Micheletti as the
new president after the military detained and
expelled Zelaya to Costa Rica.
But Obama's remarks late in the afternoon -
particularly those about Zelaya's official status -
appear to have closed that gap.
"I think it would be a terrible precedent if we
start moving backwards into the era in which we are
seeing military coups as a means of political
transition, rather than democratic elections," Obama
said.
"The region has made enormous progress over the past
20 years in establishing democratic traditions in
Central America and Latin America. We don't want to
go back to a dark past. We always want to stand with
democracy," he said.
Obama's remarks very much echoed Insulza's statement
earlier in the day. Noting the OAS Permanent
Assembly's condemnation of the moves against Zelaya
late Sunday, the former Chilean former minister said
the Council had "distance(d) the organisation from
dark periods in the history of our continent".
At the United Nations in New York City, U.N.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also issued a
statement condemning Sunday's events and calling for
"the re-instatement of the democratically elected
representatives of the country," while the U.N.
General Assembly, which is chaired by Nicaragua's
permanent representative Miguel d'Escoto Brockman,
held a formal debate on Zelaya's ouster.
For now, most attention here will be focused on
Tuesday's extraordinary meeting of the OAS General
Assembly which Clinton is expected to attend.
Despite the doubts raised by her remarks to the
press, the secretary of state made clear that it
will rely above all on multilateral efforts to
resolve the crisis peacefully.
Nonetheless, her statement set off a small firestorm
among human rights and democracy activists here
Monday who were concerned that they signaled a
willingness to accept a solution that fell short of
Zelaya's reinstatement and a retreat from public
statements made by the U.S. ambassador in
Tegucigalpa, Hugo Lawrence, who had publicly
insisted until now that Washington would not
recognise anyone as president except Zelaya.
"The political message (Clinton's remarks) are
sending is risky," said Vicki Gass, a Central
America analyst at the Washington Office on Latin
America (WOLA). "If the U.S. doesn't stand strong on
this, it will set back its attempts to restore its
image in the region."
"Moreover," she said, "with all of (President
Alvaro) Colom's problems at the moment, Guatemala is
already perilously close to a coup itself," she
added.
Some analysts speculated that Clinton's remarks may
have been designed in part to gain some leverage
over Zelaya who is seen by right-wing critics here
as aligning Honduras behind Venezuelan President
Hugo Chavez and other left-wing populists, including
Bolivian President Evo Morales, Nicaraguan President
Daniel Ortega, and Ecuadorean President Rafael
Correa Delgado.
Washington, which has conducted military training,
supply and surveillance activities from Honduran air
bases for the past 30 years, last year lost access
to a key air base in Ecuador as a result of a
campaign promise by Correa.
In addition, Washington may want to condition its
backing for Zelaya's re-instatement on his pledge to
drop efforts to reform the constitution in a way
that that would permit him to serve a second term as
president, ret. Amb. John Negroponte, who was the
Reagan administration's envoy to Tegucigalpa during
the early years of the "contra war" against the
Sandinista government in Nicaragua, told the
Washington Post Monday.
Zelaya's attempt to hold a non-binding national
referendum on the question clearly galvanised his
foes in the other major branches of government,
including the armed forces and the Supreme Court.
Indeed, the far-right Americas columnist for the
Wall Street Journal, Mary Anastasia O'Grady,
celebrated Zelaya's ouster in an op-ed entitled
"Honduras Defends Its Democracy."
"Hugo Chavez's coalition-building efforts suffered a
setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent
its president packing for abusing the nation's
constitution," O'Grady wrote.
She called on "Honduran patriots" to "hold their
ground" against international pressure by "Fidel
Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton, and, of
course, Hugo (Chavez) himself" to return Zelaya to
office.
*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read
at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/. |
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