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U.S. Diplomat in Honduras in Bid to Save
Accord
WASHINGTON – The United States has
dispatched a senior diplomat to Honduras in
hopes of salvaging an accord that was meant
to end the crisis sparked by the June 28
coup against President Mel Zelaya, the State
Department said Tuesday.
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Craig
Kelly will be in Tegucigalpa through
Thursday, department spokesman P.J. Crowley
told reporters.
The aim of the visit is “to move the process
forward towards a free and fair election and
the seating of a new government in Honduras
at the end of this month,” Crowley said.
Hondurans are set to go to the polls Nov. 29
to select a successor for Zelaya, whose
four-year term ends in January. But
opponents of the coup say a free and fair
vote is impossible given rampant repression
under the de facto regime that took power in
June, which is blamed for at least a dozen
deaths.
The impasse between Zelaya, who slipped back
into the country Sept. 21 and is holed up at
the Brazilian Embassy, and the coup regime
led by Roberto Micheletti appeared to be
resolved late last month with the signing of
the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord.
But the pact unraveled last week when
Micheletti pressed ahead with the formation
of a national unity government envisioned by
the accord before Congress took up the
matter of Zelaya’s reinstatement, another
key point in the agreement.
Zelaya says the installation of the national
unity government and undoing the putsch are
inextricably linked, but the Micheletti camp
insists on treating them as separate issues
and Honduran lawmakers have yet to even
schedule a debate on restoring the ousted
president.
The Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord represents a
“pathway to a free and fair election,”
Crowley said Tuesday.
“And the outcome, which if handled properly,
can be supported both within Honduras and
within the region. And obviously, we
continue – we’ll continue to kind of push
both sides to live up to the agreement that
they reached recently, and to continue to
move forward towards the election,” the
official told reporters.
Asked about Zelaya’s reinstatement, he said:
“It’s not about any one person. It’s about a
return of democratic processes and
democratic government in Honduras. It’s an
important aspect to us of continuing to
support democracy within the hemisphere.”
“I think it’s important to put these steps
and these processes in place so that you can
have confidence in the electoral process and
the result,” Crowley added. “But obviously,
on Nov. 29 when the election takes place,
we’ll be able to evaluate what happened and
then what the consequences are.”
The head of the Organization of American
States, Chile’s Jose Miguel Insulza, said
Tuesday he was not optimistic that Zelaya
and Micheletti would resume talks.
Insulza also ruled out sending OAS election
observers to Honduras under the current
circumstances.
Most members of the OAS and the Rio Group, a
hemispheric club that excludes the United
States and Canada, have indicated they will
not recognize the Honduran elections as
valid unless Zelaya is reinstated
beforehand.
Micheletti has contended all along that
Zelaya’s ouster was not a coup, insisting
the army was 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 and their
foreign apologists 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 in
January. EFE
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