Honduras talks postponed, Arias has new proposal

[bemildred]

Source: Reuters

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduras' de facto government said on Wednesday that talks aimed at ending a deep political crisis following last month's coup have been delayed and it is waiting for new proposals from the mediator.

Carlos Lopez, the interim government's foreign minister, said it remained open to talks but it was not clear when they might begin, and deposed President Manuel Zelaya has vowed to return to Honduras if there is no deal by the end of Wednesday.

"I am waiting for a new proposal," Lopez told local television. "We are waiting for a call ... Honduras is open to dialogue," he added, saying the talks could resume later this week.

De facto leader Roberto Micheletti, installed by Congress after Zelaya's June 28 ouster, has repeatedly said he would not allow his foe to return to serve out the rest of his term -- the central sticking point in mediation efforts.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE56L45120090722

[Judi Lynn]

1. Zelaya proved himself completely reasonable by being the party agreeing to Arias' plan already.

He's not any part of the hold-up here.

Looking forward to hearing what Arias' next move will be.

[bemildred]

4. "Keep stalling" is my guess.

I suppose it's too early to designate 3 days as the "Arias Unit".

This is interesting:

Honduras' Congress and the state prosecutor's office are set to meet later on Wednesday to discuss and vote on whether Zelaya should be allowed to return and under what circumstances, a senior Congress official said.

[Judi Lynn]

6. That's completely unexpected, isn't it? That's today, too. Will be watching for more on it. n/t

[bemildred]

7. It's going to be interesting to see how they get along.

They kind of need to figure out a plan, you can't stall forever.

Whatever chances they (the Congress, the coup backers) have depend foremost on working in concert. If they start to bicker and get mad at each other, the end is not far off.

[timeforpeace]

2. Zelaya sure gets a lot of mileage out of the "I'm going back tomorrow" line. How many times has he

and Chavez said that? Do it, let the trial begin, moveon™ dude.

[Bacchus39]

3. yeah, he must be walking from Venezuela

don't they have a helicopter they can lend him?

[David__77]

9. Sure, why not?

I think that a trial would be of great political importance. It would create a positive polarization and politicization within Honduran society. The usurping authority does not want this to happen though.

I do think that Zelaya should return now. Talks have failed. He should covertly return.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Twenty-first Century Coups d'Etat

Published on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 by Americas Program
Twenty-first Century Coups d'Etat
by Laura Carlsen

The consolidation of power through brute force represents a serious step backward for the region. How is it possible that a coup d'etat could take place and survive in the 21st century? This is the question that the international community faces after the coup d'etat that Honduras suffered on June 28. On that day, the Honduran Armed Forces kidnapped the democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya, and forced him onto a flight bound for Costa Rica. The Organization of American States (OAS), the UN General Assembly, the U.S. government, and every Latin American nation have denounced the coup and demanded the immediate reinstatement of President Zelaya. The international diplomatic response was strong and swift, leaving the de facto regime in Honduras isolated. Many believed that this response would be sufficient to force Roberto Micheletti, the "president" imposed by the architects of the coup, to renounce his claim to rule by force.

It has been several decades since Central America emerged from a tragic and bloody era of military dictatorships, in several cases supported by the U.S. government. Times have changed. President Obama united with the global call to restore democracy in the impoverished Central American nation of Honduras. The country has been hit with economic sanctions through the temporary closing of borders with neighboring Central American countries, the freezing of loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the suspension of oil imports from Petrocaribe, and the suspension of USD $16.5 million in U.S. aid, among other sanctions.

~snip~
It is time to recognize that diplomatic pressure alone has not worked. The U.S. government, along with other countries, needs to move past talk and start implementing concrete actions. Although it has applied limited economic sanctions, much more needs to be done based on an official declaration from the State Department that a coup has taken place in Honduras. Commercial measures under CAFTA must also be applied. This implies an incredibly high price, not only for the de facto regime, but also for the Honduran people. The people have made it clear that these measures are necessary and have demanded that the U.S. government and others apply these sanctions. The coup leaders and the international far-right that support them are aware that Honduras is a test case for the Obama administration and the world. If the coup leaders succeed in consolidating power based on military force it will represent a serious step backward for the rule of law in the region.

The Honduran people have shown their willingness to take the personal risks of demonstrating in the streets against the coup and enduring the consequences of more sanctions. The rest of the world should follow their example in the fight for democracy and demand that their governments implement stronger measures to restore Honduras' constitutional order. Only then will it be possible to send a message once and for all that military coups are unacceptable in the 21st century.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/22-6

[peacetalksforall]

8. I think that a group of representatives from the organizations that have denounced

the coup should travel to Honduras, ask for meetings, stay until they get them, do their own negotiating or demanding.

Mr. Arias is a negotiator of record and it isn't his fault if Honduras under Micheletti(and the U.S.?) use delaying tactics. Delays are the key issue for restitution as everyone has been saying.

Sec. Clinton is in Asia. I assume that she left someone in charge of the Honduras crisis, but I also hope that they would not say that they have to wait for her should some milestone on behalf of Zelaya occur today or tomorrow.

I am one who wishes that Chavez would keep his mouth shut at times, but I relate to him in that he does speak up, unlike what seems to be 90% of the U.S. who don't speak or don't know what any of the issues are. I like the ideals of Chavez and I trust him more than the mystery heads of the big corporations that are trying desperately to hang on to their sucker arrangement in Central and South America - a century old sucker game with the people who have been encapsulated in poverty all these years.

These barons want the entire world to serve them - with their labor and their earth resources.

So I note the snide remarks above (about walking from Venezuela) and I suggest you dissenters provide some supporting remarks about your position.

They tried to do it to Aristede and they were successful.
They tried to do it to Chavez and they were not successful.
They are trying to do it to Zelaya (duly elected) and we now know and can piece together that it was in full support of the U.S. The U.S. knew it was coming. They were in Honduras just before it occurred. The response has been utterly weak or absent. We know plenty of motives - pharmas, telecommunication interests of U.S. Corporations, greed of corporations, and the goals and objectives for military might in the area BY THE U.S. In other words we support coups and we organize them. And sometimes we assassinate and massacre, we conspire and betray, and spin the most dandy lies imaginable.

NO MORE! NO MORE COUPS!!! NO MORE U.S. AND EUROPEAN DOMINATION. NO MORE CIA TRAINED LOYALISTS TO THE U.S. NO MORE GAMES WITH LEADERS AND OBJECTIVES AS IN COLOMBIA. NO MORE DERISION AGAINST NON-100% WHITE, NON-EUROPEAN HERITAGE LEADERS WHO TAKE AND LIVE OFF OUR PAYOLA FOR WORKING WITH THE BARONS. ONE CENTURY OR SINCE THE FIRST LANDING. ENOUGH! INDIGENOUS LEADERS ARE FINE if they are for their own people. We are no longer blind about what has and is going on.

[IDFbunny]

10. It would be best if all is forgiven.

But it seems Zelaya wants congress and the supreme court to disband so they can be hanged later. That's my understanding for a "coalition government" or "reconciliation government" is for. Why would they agree to that?

[Peace Patriot]

11. The coupsters objective may be to have over a thousand leftist activists in jail

as political prisoners, a couple of them dead, months of martial law, suspension of all Constitutional civil rights and shutdown of all opposition or objective media, and the people of Honduras in a state of fear, for the elections in November. Zelaya was term limited out, so he wont' be able to run, and his proposal for an advisory referendum on whether people want fundamental change in Honduras (a Constituent Assembly to discuss, re-write and hold a vote of the people on a new Constitution) got taken off the table by the junta. So these will be ideal conditions in which to prevent any new leftist (pro-labor, pro-social justice, pro-reform) candidates from mounting a successful campaign for president or other offices, and in which to suppress leftist votes through intimidation, lies and propaganda, and/or outright election theft. In other words, their objective may not have been so much to rid themselves of a reformer president by force--a president with only six months left to his term--but rather to stay in power by fixing the election.

International election monitors may be present, but they really can't stop a determined junta from stealing an election; they can only report on it afterwards. And this junta has shown that it cares not a wit for the opinion of the entire world. They hold all the levers of power and suppression; they will elect themselves and declare it legit--while the Associated Pukes, Rotters and the whole gang backpage any election monitors' reports that say otherwise. Generally, election monitors won't touch a situation like this; they require months and sometimes years of involvement with the government and electoral authorities, in setting up election rules, so they know WHAT they are monitoring. They can't just drop into a country, at the last minute, and insure a fair election. It will be interesting to see if any of them--the OAS, the Carter Center, the EU election groups, etc.--agree to monitor the election. This is the kind of situation that Jimmy Carter does get involved in (civil war, need for outside election monitors). It's why he set up the Carter Center. It is first of all a means of achieving peace in a divided country, where violence threatens or has already occurred. The Carter Center is very good at this sort of thing. But one of their rules is that all parties agree to their involvement in pre-election planning. And if I am right about this junta--that their goal is stealing the election--they may not agree to that, and they may just steal the election anyway and kiss off the post-election reports.

The coup's stance that they will not let Zelaya finish his term may be a ruse. They may know that ultimately they will have to yield on that point. And every day they delay, they entrench themselves further and have more time to plan election fraud. Zelaya's return will complicate that goal. He will most certainly fight for an honest election--or as honest a one as possible. In the position of president, he can probably do a lot toward that end. So delaying his return as long as possible may also be related to the coming elections. He will have less time to champion leftist candidates for president and other offices, but, more importantly, less time to insure a clean election (to negotiate with election monitoring groups--who need to be invited to the country by the government--to prevent voter intimidation, to get political activists released from prison, to restore media freedom, etc.).

The motives of the entities behind the coup--hidden hands like those of John McCain, Otto Reich and John Negroponte, and Rumsfeld moles in the Pentagon--may be much bigger than keeping a corrupt "free trade" government in power. The Pentagon and associated war profiteers want to keep the US military base in Honduras and control of the Honduran military. McCain*, et al, probably want to sabotage Obama's stated policy of peace, respect and cooperation in Latin America--to embarrass Obama, and to create a rightwing "talking point" that he is "soft on communism" or whatever--as part of a planned stolen election in 2012 (which we are extremely vulnerable to with rightwing corporations controlling our vote counts with 'TRADE SECRET' code in all the voting machines). And there may well be a plan for Oil War II behind all this. Honduras has a long history of being used as a "lily pad" country for US aggression in Latin America. And there is considerable evidence that the Bushwhacks intend to regain global corporate predator control of the oil in Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba and other countries.

They of course all want to stem the leftist democracy tide in Central America. (All three of Honduras' immediate neighbors now have leftist governments--Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala.) The Bushwhacks have tried to do so in South America, and have colossally failed. (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile--all with leftist democratic governments.) Real democracy is a huge obstacle to global corporate predator goals of resource exploitation and enslavement and looting of the poor. And our government has become largely a tool of these predators. (That's why they took over our voting system.) They've hijacked our military for their corporate resource in Iraq, but failed to extend that resource war to Iran, so where else are their major oil reserves to be stolen by war or other means? Right here in our own hemisphere, controlled democratically by the people of Venezuela, Ecuador and other Latin American countries. And this is essentially indefended oil (visa vis the US military). When the Bushwhacks reconstituted the US 4th Fleet in the Caribbean, Lula da Silva said that it is a threat to Brazil's oil. Everybody south of the border knows that it is a threat to Venezuela, whose main oil reserves are located on its Caribbean coast. Not even Brazil feels safe. And it was Brazil that proposed a "common defense" in the context of the new South American "common market"--UNASUR--which everyone agreed to. Brazil. Not Venezuela.

It was in this context that Zelaya was ousted at gunpoint, by a military that is under the thumb of the Pentagon, and that Obama's stated goals of peace, respect and cooperation in Latin America are hanging by a thread. I do think Obama wants Zelaya to be reinstated, and maybe Clinton does, too. But that isn't the whole story, by any means. What will be the state of Honduran democracy, even if he is restored to his elected position (for the four or five months remaining in his term)? Can the coming elections be fair? Who will insure their fairness? And will Honduras--a country with an extremely poor population, lashed by "free trade"--continue to be just a stepping stone for US warmongers in the region?

------------------------

*(McCain has been funneling $40+ million US taxpayer money to the rightwing groups in Honduras, through the USAID/International Republican Institute, as Evo Gollinger's FOIA research has shown. He has a direct interest in Honduras, as a shill for the telecommunications industry. He is a major player in this situation, and is thick with fascist coup plotters all over Latin America.)