Honduras: Zelaya meeting in Dominican Republic Cancelled

Again the Micheletti government simply keeps to the same position it has held since the whole farcical negotiation process started and it has ultimately won at every step. It has no reason to give an inch now because it knows that Obama will do nothing. He has retreated all along. The sticking point now is that in order for Zelaya to go anywhere to meet anyone he must recognise the coup govt. in order to get safe passage. This of course would mean he relinquishes any claim to be president so of course he refuses.
The only possible negotiated way out now is for Zelaya to meet with the president elect Lobo Sosa in order to work something out. This meeting could take place in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. However, Sosa himself may have limited power over the actions of Micheletti and he also belongs to the main opposing political party to that of Micheletti. This is from this site.



Dominican Meeting Cancelled
Porfirio Lobo Sosa and Manuel Zelaya Rosales will not meet in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic on Monday. Both Zelaya and Fernandez pronounced the effort dead. Fernandez said the de facto government of Roberto Micheletti placed too many obstacles to obtaining the safe conduct for Zelaya. The Dominican government issued a communique which read in part:

"The willingness to begin dialogue this week was reiterated by President Fernandez, as much as by Zelaya and the candidate elect, but the de facto government insists on conditioning Zelaya's leaving the Brazilian Embassy as political asylum."
Yesterday, a spokesperson for Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom, announced that if the de facto government issued a safe conduct for Zelaya to meet with Lobo, then Guatemala, which up to now has rejected the elections in Honduras, would recognize Lobo Sosa as "the legitimate president of Honduras." The spokesperson alluded to the possibility that other countries would also make this concession if the safe conduct was forthcoming.

Still, the de facto government announced yesterday that Zelaya was free to seek "territorial political asylum" but that it could not be in any Central American country, and he would first have to sign a piece of paper acknowledging, among other things, that Congress had removed him from office. Milton Mateo, a spokesperson for the de facto Foreign Minister, Carlos Lopez Contreras, told the AP that:

"It has been decided at the highest level of government: it will be a territorial asylum and cannot be in any country touching on Honduras, that is in Central America."
The reason they want him to seek political asylum is that under the Caracas Convention of 1954, someone seeking territorial asylum cannot involve themselves in confrontations with the government in their home country. This would remove Zelaya as a "threat" to the de facto government and let them get their propaganda out.


Peruvian President Alain Garcia immediately suggested that Lobo meet with Zelaya in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa.

"Lobo should talk with Zelaya to find out what terms Zelaya would accept for a recuperation of his political dignity, or at least to give the impression that he knows how to dialogue. To turn your back on him is less democratic"

Meanwhile, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, returned to Honduras after visiting the United States. He announced, on return, that he would establish the truth commission called for the the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord, during the first quarter of 2010, as the Accord requires.

In a surprise move, Ricardo Maduro, former president of Honduras, called on Congress to declare a general amnesty for political crimes, including those committed by Zelaya and Micheletti.

"Its a tragedy to leave open the wound, in the sense that constitutional violations can be used by any future government to reopen this wound, to re-separate the Hondurans, and to use it for political persecution, be it against President Zelaya or against President Micheletti and theirs, it appears to me that we need to close now this wound."
He called on Congress to do it now.