Despite recent comments by the Honduran Foreign Minister to a Tegucigalpa radio station, trumpeted on the front page of a pro-Micheletti newspaper today, it remains true that no government in the world has recognized the coup government in Honduras.
Mired in isolation, the coup plotters continue to dig in their heels. Even though Micheletti's delegation in Costa Rica -- led by the same Foreign Minister caught lying on the radio -- offered a compromise proposal acceptable to both Zelaya and Arias, the thugs back in Honduras immediately rejected the compromise their own representatives had proposed. With nothing concrete on the table, mediator Oscar Arias postponed the talks scheduled for today.
More discussion, and a beautiful pic of a Honduran cloud forest, over the fold...
The thugs who illegally overthrew Manuel Zelaya last June 28 have had serious difficulty finding an acceptable Foreign Minister to represent them before the international community. Their first pick, the racist buffoon Enrique Ortez Colindres, was forced to resign after video emerged of him calling Barack Obama a "n... field hand." Ortez's replacement, former ambassador to the US Roberto Flores Bermudez, didn't last much longer, as a week later he was replaced himself by the current Foreign Minister Carlos Lopez Contreras. Now Lopez Contreras is causing international waves himself by misstating the formal position of the Colombian government regarding the Honduran coup.
Here's how pro-coup Honduran daily La Prensa reports Lopez's recent remarks:
El presidente colombiano, Álvaro Uribe, expresó su "simpatía" por el Gobierno interino de Honduras, dijo hoy a la emisora La FM el canciller hondureño, Carlos López, quien el pasado lunes se reunió con el mandatario en Bogotá.
[Colombian president Alvaro Uribe expressed his "sympathy" for the interim [sic] government of Honduras, the Honduran Foreign Minister Carlos Lopez said today to La FM radio. Lopez met Monday with the Colombian leader in Bogota.]
The pro-democracy Honduran daily Diario Tiempo, however, had access to the Colombian government's press release regarding the meeting in Bogota, and its reporting is a great deal different:
Gobierno de Uribe recibe a delegación de Micheletti y desautoriza al canciller
Una delegación del gobierno hondureño de facto fue recibida informalmente el pasado lunes en Bogotá por el gobierno colombiano "en el marco del proceso de facilitación para la situación de Honduras", informó este miércoles la Cancillería....
Además, el gobierno de Colombia dijo que "no avala los comentarios personales expresados por integrantes de la comisión hondureña frente a terceros países", agregó.
[Uribe government receives Micheletti delegation and disavows Foreign Minister
A delegation of the Honduran de facto government was received informally last Monday in Bogota by the Colombian government "within the framework of the process of facilitation of the situation in Honduras," the [Colombian] Foreign Ministry reported this Wednesday....
The government of Colombia furthermore said that it "does not support the personal statements expressed by members of the Honduran commission to third countries," the statement added.
Adding to Lopez's woes was the sorry fate suffered by his own compromise proposal seeking to end the standoff between the coup makers and ousted president Zelaya. According to today's New York Times, Lopez's plan would have allowed Zelaya to return to the presidency, moved the planned presidential elections up one month to October, and given Zelaya a limited, six-month amnesty for the political crimes he was accused of and which led to his overthrow.
The Times reports that plan was rejected by members of the Honduran Supreme Court, reportedly because of the provision for limited amnesty. The Times makes clear that the stumbling block to a negotiated settlement of the crisis is the intransigence of the members of the de facto government and their supporters:
The plan would for at least six months have prohibited all political prosecutions involving people on both sides of the coup and provided for the formation of a truth commission to investigate the acts that led to Mr. Zelaya’s removal.
Early in the day officials hailed the proposal as the first sign that at least some leaders in Mr. Micheletti’s camp were willing to accept Mr. Zelaya back as president. But the rejection Tuesday night made it clear that after two rounds of talks, Mr. Micheletti — along with members of the Supreme Court, the Congress and the business community — had hardly moved at all and that prospects for a negotiated solution remained slim.
According to Micheletti, the thugs who overthrew the democratic government of Honduras are acting
as a bulwark against "dictatorship" and "communism."
I guess they had to destroy Honduran democracy in order to save it...
Zelaya, backed by mediator Arias, the United States, the OAS, the United Nations, and the European Union, continues to insist that he will accept no deal that doesn't involve his return to the presidency to finish out his term. He continues to call for sanctions on Honduras as a means of pressuring the coup makers to cede power, but in recent days he has begun to mediate that call:
Supporters of ousted President Manuel Zelaya are advocating targeted economic sanctions to pressure the interim government to allow his return rather than broader measures that might harm the Central American country's poorest citizens....
But with Honduras' defiant leaders vowing to tough it out, Zelaya is rethinking his support for measures that might only hurt the poorest.
From Managua, Nicaragua, Zelaya said late Tuesday that he sent a letter to President Barack Obama naming the army officials and lawmakers who allegedly planned his ouster and asking for economic sanctions specifically targeting "those who conspired directly to execute the coup."
Such targeted sanctions may be more difficult to impose, but they may be less damaging to the country overall. They also hold the promise, if negotiations do not succeed in restoring Zelaya to office, of remaining in place over the long term.
I, for one, would be very happy if the United States were to close its borders to thugs who overthrow elected presidents. It would be a welcome change from the past practice of this country towards Latin American dictators, and a huge step forward towards a new, more equitable, world order.
To close, I wanted to share this picture of the El Cusuco National Park, a cloud forest in Northwestern Honduras on the border with Guatemala. It just reminded me of the beautiful afternoon I spent in Copan, not far from El Cusuco, twenty-three years ago.
The caption reads:
Plantation of giant ferns in El Cusuco Park