Honduras negotiations. Now going round in circles.

On Friday Micheletti presented for consideration a proposal which had already been rejected several times. Micheletti seems to treat the whole issue of negotiations as joke. Yesterday he presented a proposal which ina the first instance would require recognising that there was really no coup that everything done by the de facto govt. was on the up and up! Micheletti has never accepted the basic presuppositions of any negotiations and that is that Zelaya return to the presidency. From this site.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Going Around in Circles
The de facto government of Roberto Micheletti Bain, yet again today, proposed the already rejected idea that if Zelaya steps down, Micheletti will step down, and some third party could take over. Its been suggested, and rejected, multiple times in the negotiations, and even in the months leading up to the negotiations. Vilma Morales, negotiator for Micheletti, made this suggestion during a press conference this morning after Zelaya declared the dialogue closed.Zelaya, in a phone call to Radio Globo, compared it to staging yet another coup.

U.S. halts more aid to Honduran govt. because of coup.

While this action places a bit more pressure on the coup government it will probably not be enough to force them to agree to Zelaya returning. The military, many Church leaders, and also some business leaders favor the Arias accords. After all, Zelaya would be a lame duck president for a few months and everyone is granted amnesty. The coup leaders must feel that they have enough supporters in the US, Panama, Colombia and elsewhere to weather the storm rather than lose face by changing their positions.
As the article mentions, the U.S. could implement a full trade embargo and that would very soon bring the regime to the bargaining table again or it could freeze U.S. bank accounts of Honduran coup leaders.


US halts aid over Honduras coup

Honduras could lose $200m as a result of the US decision
The US has halted all non-humanitarian aid to Honduras - about $30m (£18.4m) - in the wake of June's coup.
The state department said the US needed to take strong action given the failure of the replacement regime to restore "democratic, constitutional rule".
Left-leaning President Manuel Zelaya was ousted from power and forced to leave the country on 28 June.
The US aid decision came as he met Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington.
"With this decision of the United States, the countries of the Americas have formed a single bloc in condemning the coup," Mr Zelaya was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.
A government has been installed in Honduras under interim leader Roberto Micheletti, who has refused to allow Mr Zelaya back into Honduras.
'Strong measures'
The US said it would not, at this stage, recognise elections scheduled for November as legitimate.
ANALYSIS

Stephen Gibbs, BBC News, Honduras
Much of the money was to be spent on rebuilding a main road across the country, something which the embattled leadership can presumably do without.
The measure which the US could take, but appears not to be contemplating, is a full trade embargo - 70% of the Honduran GDP depends on trade with the US.
Without that, it would appear unlikely the country could operate for more than a few weeks. But instead, the stalemate continues.
Honduras is, just about, surviving its worldwide diplomatic isolation. Businesses remain open, as are borders and airports. The government wants to give the impression both to its population and the outside world that everything is continuing as normal.
A state department spokesman said: "There's a sense that the de facto regime was thinking if we can just get to an election that this will absolve them of all their sins.
"That is not the case."
The terminated aid included $9.4m from the Agency for International Development, $8.96m from the State Department and $1.7m in security assistance.
About $11m from the US Millennium Challenge Corporation, given to countries with a track record of sound governance and economic policy, would also be cut.
The US said "strong measures" were needed because the government had yet to adopt the San Jose Accord, a plan brokered by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, which - if agreed - would return Mr Zelaya to a limited form of power until elections scheduled for November.
The US aid decision was described as "not very friendly" by Honduran officials, AFP reported.
"We regret that a friendly government of a friendly country and people would take the decision to side with [Hugo] Chavez," said the head of Honduran cabinet, Rafael Pineda Ponce, referring to the president of Venezuela.
Mr Chavez, Latin America's most prominent leftist leader and no friend of the US, has sought to isolate Honduras since Mr Zelaya's ouster.
However, the suspension of US aid to Honduras does not mean the US believes that Mr Zelaya's removal officially meets the legal definition of a military coup d'etat, officials said.
In a statement, the state department said it recognised the "complicated nature" of the events leading to Mr Zelaya's removal, which included constitutional disputed in the Honduran courts.
Meanwhile, Brazil has suspended visa-free travel for all Hondurans in response to the coup.
By blocking new visas for Hondurans, Brazil hopes "to promote the immediate restoration of President Jose Manuel Zelaya to the functions to which the Honduran people elected him," the country's foreign ministry said in a statement.

OAS chief still has hope Honduran settlement.

Given that the Honduran Supreme Court has declared that Zelaya will face arrest and criminal charges if he returns and Micheletti has said that Zelaya cannot return under any conditions it is difficult to understand why Insulza, the OAS chief, still has some optimism. The key may be that the military, some in the Roman Catholic hierarchy and Chambers of Commerce favor a solution along the lines of the Arias accords. They all met together the other day but nevertheless so far their comrades coup supporters are unmoved! If Obama got serious and starting freezing assets of coup leaders in the US and cut off all US aid--much is still flowing partly through a fund that Hillary Clinton chairs, then things might change rather quickly.
Zelaya has of late said nothing about returning. Has he been told to shut up by the U.S. and wait patiently for his return as a lame duck president for a few months!

OAS chief still has hope for Honduran settlement
OAS chief still has hope for compromise to settle Honduran governmental crisis
FOSTER KLUGAP News
Aug 26, 2009 14:23 EST
The head of the Organization of American States held out hope Wednesday for a resolution of the Honduran presidential crisis even after the high-level delegation he led to the Central American country failed to arrange for ousted President Manuel Zelaya's return.



OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza urged a quick acceptance of compromise accords before campaigning heats up for the Nov. 29 presidential election to pick Zelaya's successor.
"There's still a climate for making one final effort," Insulza told an OAS meeting, speaking through an interpreter. Insulza was briefing the organization after returning from a visit to Tegucigalpa, Honduras' capital, with a group of Western Hemisphere foreign ministers.
Zelaya was deposed and exiled on June 28 amid suspicions among his opponents that he wanted to overturn the constitutional provision limiting Honduran presidents to a single term. He denies that was his goal.
Insulza noted some progress arising from the OAS delegation's meetings with senior lawmakers, ministers, presidential candidates and members of the judiciary, electoral commission, military and civil society. At the same time, he acknowledged a continuing reluctance among many of those he met with to accept the San Jose Accord, a compromise proposed by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who has acted as a mediator in the dispute.
With each passing day, Insulza said, the margin for solving the crisis gets slimmer. Attention to the coup will not disappear, he said, but it will be diverted by the election campaign season that begins Sept. 1.
Many in Honduras, Insulza said, raised concerns about Zelaya's reinstatement and an amnesty for his alleged offenses, both part of the San Jose Accord.
The officials the delegation met with, Insulza said, appeared more interested in discussing the events that led to Zelaya's ouster. "We wanted to get back to the agreement of San Jose, which was our goal in being there," he said.
On Tuesday, Honduras' interim leader, Roberto Micheletti, acknowledged the country would suffer consequences for refusing to reinstate Zelaya, but he suggested that nothing short of armed intervention could change the situation.
Lew Amselem, the U.S. representative to the OAS, said the U.S. decision to stop, starting Wednesday, issuing most visas at its embassy in Honduras sends a clear signal that "it is never acceptable in the 21st century to expel a sitting president from a country."
Opposition to Zelaya's return is fairly widespread, he said, but "nothing changes the fact that a president was forcibly deposed and exiled. That's the issue."
Zelaya's return to finish his presidential term is indispensable to resolving the matter, Amselem said.
The interim government says Zelaya's removal was legal because it was ordered by the Honduran Supreme Court after he went ahead with plans to hold a referendum asking Honduran voters if they wanted to form a special assembly to rewrite the constitution. The court had ruled that vote illegal.
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