Despite recent State Department aid-cut media show, millions of taxpayer dollars continue to flow into Central American country
The U.S. government’s policy toward the de facto government that now rules Honduras can best be described as two-faced — expressing rhetorical outrage publicly while quietly continuing to prop up the putsch regime economically behind the scenes.
To date, the U.S. government has declined to declare officially that the June 28 overthrow and exiling of democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was carried out via a “military” coup d'état — thereby avoiding the invocation of a U.S. law that would mandate a draconian cutoff in U.S. aid to the Honduran government.
However, in its diplomatic dance with terminology, the Department of State, under the leadership of Secretary Hillary Clinton, is telling the media that what happened in Honduras on June 28 was still a coup d'état — absent the military modifier.
From a Sept. 3 press State Department press briefing:
... The President made clear very early on, and the Secretary
as well, this was a coup d’état. … The Secretary is not required by our law to come to a conclusion regarding what type of coup it is in order to cut off assistance. She cut off assistance because it was a coup d’état. …
But that’s where the rub is, the little matter of “assistance.”
Earlier this month, for the second time since the coup played out in late June, the Department of State ginned up U.S. press coverage of its efforts to ratchet up the economic pressure on the de facto Honduran regime, led by strongman Roberto Micheletti.
But despite the media show, as of today, more than two months after the coup and a little more than two months before Honduras’ scheduled presidential elections, nothing has changed — including the fact that the U.S. government continues to send millions of dollars in foreign aid to Honduras, which continues to be ruled by an illegal, thuggish junta.
The Evidence
The board of directors of the Millennium Challenge Corp., a U.S. aid agency funded by taxpayers and chaired by Secretary of State Clinton, on Sept. 9 issued a press release indicating that it had voted to terminate $11 million in funding for Honduras related to two transportation projects and also to "put on hold" another $4 million in assistance pegged for yet another road project.
The road-improvement funding is part of a five-year (2005-2010), $215 million aid compact between MCC and the government of Honduras.
“Good governance and accountability are at the heart of our poverty reduction programs, and governments that are inconsistent in these areas jeopardize not only MCC funding, but also the long-term impact that good policies can have on growth in their local economies,” MCC’s Acting CEO, Darius Mans, said in a prepared statement announcing the Honduran aid cut.
But was it really an aid cut?
MCC spokesperson Sarah Stevenson told Narco News last week that as part of her agency’s $215 million compact with Honduras, as of Aug. 31, MCC had “committed approximately $191 million to contracts; approximately $91 million has been disbursed” — actually sent to Honduras.
She added that the $11 million in funding terminated at the Sept. 9 board meeting involved money not yet committed under contract. Although she failed to address the $4 million put on hold, the MCC press release makes clear that money also is linked to funds that have not been “contractually obligated.”
A simple math computation tells us, then, that MCC still has some $100 million in contractually committed funding to deliver to the putsch regime in Honduras between now and the end of 2010.
Continued>>.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2009/09/money-talks-us-policy-toward-honduran-putsch-regime
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