Honduras accord is on verge of collapse - washingtonpost.com

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Ousted president says U.S. lacks commitment to reinstatement

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 12, 2009

Less than two weeks after U.S. diplomats announced a historic agreement to reverse a coup in Honduras, the accord is in danger of collapse and both Honduran officials and U.S. lawmakers are blaming American missteps for some of the failure.

Ousted president Manuel Zelaya, who was expelled by the military in June, said in a telephone interview that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had assured him as recently as last week that the U.S. government was seeking his return to the presidency. But he said that U.S. pressure had eased in recent days and that he no longer had faith in the agreement.

José Miguel Insulza, the head of the Organization of American States, which is helping implement the accord, said that negotiations between Zelaya and the de facto government had fallen apart and that he would not send a mission to Honduras to observe presidential elections at the end of the month. That added to the possibility that the previously scheduled elections will not be internationally recognized -- and that Honduras's five-month-old crisis will continue.

The Obama administration has invested its credibility in the Oct. 30 accord, which was reached after Clinton dispatched a senior diplomatic team to bring the two sides together. But the agreement started to fray within days, with each side interpreting the vaguely worded document its own way. Key American lawmakers, and Zelaya's followers, were startled by remarks by Assistant Secretary of State Thomas A. Shannon Jr. last week that the U.S. government would recognize the election results irrespective of whether the ousted Honduran president was returned to office promptly.

"The State Department's abrupt change of policy towards Honduras last week -- recognizing the elections scheduled for Nov. 29 even if the coup regime does not meet its commitments under the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord -- caused the collapse of an accord it helped negotiate," said Frederick L. Jones, a spokesman for Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John F. Kerry (D-Mass.).

Zelaya said he was finished with the agreement.

"Everything they do will be tricks," he said, referring to the de facto government led by Roberto Micheletti. He said U.S. guarantees had formed the underpinning for the agreement.

"Their priorities were my restitution. . . . This is a very dangerous change of foreign policy for the United States," he said.

State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said there had been no change in policy.

"We'll see what happens in the election before we can evaluate its results," he said. He rejected criticism that U.S. officials weren't pressing for the accord to work, noting that a senior diplomat handling Latin America affairs, Craig Kelly, had just spent two days in Honduras.

Another senior U.S. official noted the agreement never specifically said that Zelaya would be reinstated, instead giving the Honduran National Congress the power to vote on it. Zelaya may have decided to back out of the accord after realizing his support in Congress was softer than he initially thought, said the official, who was not authorized to comment publicly.

The first snag in the accord occurred when Micheletti asked Zelaya to submit names for a government of national unity. Zelaya balked, saying that he should head the interim government. Micheletti then decided to establish the government himself -- a move criticized by the Organization of American States.

Then the Congress indicated it could take weeks before it voted on Zelaya's reinstatement. That infuriated the ousted president, who has been holed up in the Brazilian Embassy in the Honduran capital since sneaking back into the country in September.

Some observers said the Honduran legislators appeared nervous about moving on the politically charged subject. Micheletti has urged them to hold the vote.

Shannon's comments on the elections coincided with an announcement by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) that he would no longer block Shannon's nomination as ambassador to Brazil. DeMint said he made the decision after Shannon told him that the U.S. government would recognize the Nov. 29 Honduran election results whether or not Zelaya was back in the presidency.

DeMint and some other lawmakers have called for a tougher line against Zelaya, an ally of Venezuela's anti-American president, Hugo Chávez.

BBC - Honduras rivals resolve deadlock

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The interim leader of Honduras says he is ready to sign a pact to end its crisis which could include the return of ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

Roberto Micheletti said the agreement would create a power-sharing government and require both sides to recognise the result of November's presidential poll.

Mr Zelaya said the deal, which requires the approval of the Supreme Court and Congress, would be signed on Friday.

The president was forced out of the country on 28 June.

His critics said he was seeking to amend the constitution to remove the current one-term limit on serving as president, and pave the way for his re-election.

The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has described this agreement as "historic", that suggests we are extremely close to a deal.

It is also significant that both sides say that the Congress of Honduras has to approve this.

That could mean a slight delay, but it might actually also have been the key to the solution. Neither side could agree and so ultimately, perhaps to save face, they had to leave it to others finally, and symbolically, to make an agreement.

It appears the US government put the pressure on the Micheletti government to say leave this to the Honduran Congress. And although the Congress initially voted to remove President Zelaya from power, now it wants him back, as everyone understands that it is the only way out of this.

Mr Zelaya returned covertly to Tegucigalpa on 21 September and has since been holed up in the Brazilian embassy. He says he has returned "for the restoration of democracy".

His term of office is due to finish at the end of January.

Negotiators for Mr Zelaya and Mr Micheletti resumed talks in the capital on Thursday in an attempt to resolve the political crisis which has gripped Honduras since the army-backed coup four months ago.

The opponents had earlier been told by US Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon that they had to reach an accord in order to ensure international support for the election on 29 November.

Afterwards, Mr Micheletti announced that a power-sharing deal had been reached that included a "significant concession".

"I have authorised my negotiating team to sign a deal that marks the beginning of the end of the country's political situation," the interim leader told a news conference.

"With regard to the most contentious subject in the deal, the possible restitution of Zelaya to the presidency" would be included, he said.

Mr Zelaya described the accord as a "triumph for Honduran democracy", and said he was "optimistic" of returning to power.

The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, meanwhile said she wished to congratulate both sides on "reaching an historic agreement".

Mr Micheletti said the ousted president would only be able return to office after a vote in his favour in Congress that would first have to be authorised by the country's Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court ruled that Mr Zelaya had violated the constitution in June, while Congress voted to remove him from office.

Mr Micheletti - who as the speaker of Congress was constitutionally second-in-line to the presidency - was sworn in by Congress as interim leader following the coup.

Honduran Security Forces Accused of Abuse - NYTimes.com

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By ELISABETH MALKIN

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Rosamaria Valeriano Flores was returning home from a visit to a public health clinic and found herself in a crowd of people dispersing from a demonstration in support of the ousted president, Manuel Zelaya. As she crossed the central square of the Honduran capital, a group of soldiers and police officers pushed her to the ground and beat her with their truncheons.

She said the men kicked out most of her top teeth, broke her ribs and split open her head. “A policeman spit in my face and said, ‘You will die,’ ” she said, adding that the attack stopped when a police officer shouted at the men that they would kill her.

Ms. Valeriano, 39, was sitting in the office of a Tegucigalpa human rights group last week, speaking about the assault, which took place on Aug. 12. As she told her story, mumbling to hide her missing teeth, she pointed to a scar on her scalp and to her still-sore left ribs.

Since Mr. Zelaya was removed in a June 28 coup, security forces have tried to halt opposition with beatings and mass arrests, human rights groups say. Eleven people have been killed since the coup, according to the Committee for Families of the Disappeared and Detainees in Honduras, or Cofadeh.

The number of violations and their intensity has increased since Mr. Zelaya secretly returned to Honduras two weeks ago, taking refuge at the Brazilian Embassy, human rights groups say.

The groups describe an atmosphere of growing impunity, one in which security forces act unhindered by legal constraints. Their free hand had been strengthened by an emergency decree allowing the police to detain anyone suspected of posing a threat.

“In the 1980s, there were political assassinations, torture and disappearances,” said Bertha Oliva, Cofadeh’s general coordinator, in an interview last week, recalling the political repression of the country’s so-called dirty war. “They were selective and hidden. But now there is massive repression and defiance of the whole world. They do it in broad daylight, without any scruples, with nothing to stop them.”

Amid the crackdown, a delegation of foreign ministers from the Organization of American States is scheduled to arrive in the capital, Tegucigalpa, on Wednesday in an attempt to restart negotiations between representatives for Mr. Zelaya and Roberto Micheletti, the de facto president.

In advance of the meeting, Mr. Micheletti lifted the decree Monday.

The abuses could have a chilling effect on presidential elections scheduled for Nov. 29. The de facto government and its supporters argue that the elections will close the chapter on the coup and its aftermath, but the United Nations, the United States and other governments have said that they will not recognize the vote if it is conducted under the current conditions.

“Elections are a risk because people won’t vote,” said Javier Acevedo, a lawyer with the Center for Research and the Promotion of Human Rights in Tegucigalpa. “The soldiers and police at the polls will be the same ones as those who have been carrying out the repression.”

Investigators from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights visited in August, and found a pattern of disproportionate force, arbitrary detentions and control of information.

The group asked the de facto government to provide protective measures for dozens of politicians, union leaders, teachers, human rights workers and journalists who say they have been followed and threatened.

The de facto government responded that strong measures were needed against Mr. Zelaya’s supporters, whom they described as vandals, a point backed up by government television advertisements showing burning buses and street barricades. Some of the demonstrations have turned violent as some of Mr. Zelaya’s supporters have smashed storefronts and burned tires at street barricades. The government says that three people have been killed since the coup.

Mr. Micheletti has said the investigators from the Inter-American Commission were biased, noting that its president, Luz Patricia Mejía, is Venezuelan. Much of Honduras’s political and economic elite feared that Mr. Zelaya was trying to copy Venezuela’s brand of socialism as he moved toward an alliance with that nation’s president, Hugo Chávez.

The Honduran government’s human rights institutions have failed to respond to the violations with any vigor, advocates say.

The human rights prosecutor, Sandra Ponce, is on vacation, according to news reports. Ramón Custodio, the government human rights commissioner who fought repression in the 1980s, has generally supported the coup, although he has criticized some actions of the de facto government.

Groups that were vulnerable to human rights abuses before the coup face even more risk now. Since the coup, for example, there have been six murders of gay men or transvestites, according to gay rights groups. Until 2008, the average number of such killings each year was three to six.

The day after Mr. Zelaya returned, the police broke up a demonstration by his supporters outside the Brazilian Embassy with tear gas. As people were fleeing, security forces tear-gassed the Cofadeh office, just blocks away. The action, Ms. Oliva believes, was aimed at preventing Cofadeh lawyers from intervening by taking testimony or seeking the release of people who were detained.

Since Mr. Zelaya’s return, security forces also have been rumbling through poor neighborhoods that are the base of his support. “They are going into neighborhoods in a way to intimidate people,” said Mr. Acevedo, the lawyer. In that time, the center has documented an increasing level of violence. Investigators have seen more than two dozen people with bullet wounds in hospitals, and some detainees have had their hands broken and have been burned with cigarettes, he said.

While the police and soldiers are looking for the activists who have been organizing resistance, the sweep seems to pick up anyone who gets in their way.

Yulian Lobo said her husband was arrested in the neighborhood of Villa Olímpica and accused of having a grenade. “It came out of nowhere,” she said, adding that her husband, a driver, had not been to pro-Zelaya marches.

Lesbia Marisol Flores, 38, is a resistance activist, but when the police beat her up, she was waiting at a bus stop after attending the wake of a 24-year-old woman who died after she was tear-gassed outside the Brazilian Embassy on Sept. 22.

“There were eight policemen and their faces were all covered,” she said, adding that they had selected her at random from the group at the bus stop. “There was no motive. It is their hobby now.”

Elisabeth Malkin reported from Tegucigalpa last week and added updated information from Mexico City.

Violence Feared With Overthrown President Back in Honduras - washingtonpost.com

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 23, 2009

In a battle of wills that threatened to explode into bloodshed, the two men who claim to be leader of Honduras both insisted Tuesday that they would not back down, as soldiers in the country's capital fired tear gas to disperse supporters of the leftist president who made a dramatic return three months after being flown into exile by the military.

The de facto president, Roberto Micheletti, said in an interview that he would not cede his office to Manuel Zelaya, the president who was ousted because of what the country's Supreme Court viewed as his efforts to stay in power beyond the one-term limit. Zelaya is now holed up in the Brazilian Embassy.

Still, as U.S. and Latin American diplomats worked feverishly to defuse the crisis, the de facto president acknowledged that unofficial contacts had been established between his side and the Zelaya camp.

"We are content this is going on," Micheletti said from the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa. He said, however, that he would not accept "impositions" from those close to Zelaya.

The coup in small, impoverished Honduras has brought unified condemnation from a hemisphere determined to prevent a return to the military takeovers of the past. But Honduras's neighbors -- and its most important trading partner, the United States -- have appeared impotent in the face of the crisis.

On Tuesday, Honduran soldiers used truncheons, water cannons and tear gas to disperse thousands of Zelaya supporters outside the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, according to news reports from the country. Zelaya, who was inside with about 70 friends and relatives, told reporters, "We are ready to risk everything, to sacrifice."

He had suddenly appeared in the capital a day earlier, after a secret 15-hour trip through the country. Police and soldiers quickly swarmed the area around the embassy, raising fears of violence.

"Given the reports we have received, and the poor track record of the security forces since the coup, we fear that conditions could deteriorate drastically in the coming days," Jos? Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

The U.S. government appealed to both sides to remain calm and urged Micheletti's government to respect the Brazilian diplomatic premises, which it agreed to do. U.S. diplomats in Washington and at the United Nations -- including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton -- met with Latin American diplomats to try to resolve the crisis.

"The fact is, Zelaya is there. . . . We have to now try to take advantage of the facts as we find them," said one U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He said that the United States and other governments were urging talks between Zelaya and Micheletti and that there were "initial feelers" between the two sides.

Asked if he was willing to negotiate with Zelaya, Micheletti said in the interview that he would impose conditions: "We want to hear from Mr. Zelaya first, before negotiations, that he's ready to accept the elections on the 29th of November, that he's ready to support the next government."

Zelaya has said he will not recognize the presidential election unless he is allowed to return to power, as envisioned under the "San Jose accord," which was brokered in U.S.-backed talks this summer in Costa Rica's capital. Under the pact, Zelaya would be allowed to conclude his term as scheduled in January, but his powers would be reduced and the election would be moved up by a month. Zelaya has said he is willing to sign the accord, but Micheletti has refrained.

The de facto leader said he did not trust that Zelaya would leave office as scheduled. He also said officials had discovered numerous cases of corruption linked with Zelaya. Under the San Jose accord, amnesty would be granted to people on both sides for political crimes.

But Micheletti made clear he did not envision amnesty for Zelaya.

"We have laws in the country. If he presents himself to the authorities, the courts, I think he's going to have a fair trial," Micheletti said.

Ousted Leader, Manuel Zelaya, Returns to Honduras - NYTimes.com

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By ELISABETH MALKIN

MEXICO CITY — Three months after he was expelled in a dawn coup, the deposed president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, sneaked back into his country on Monday, forcing world leaders gathered in New York to refocus their attention on the political stalemate to the south and presenting a new challenge to the de facto government.

After what he described as a 15-hour trek through the mountains, taking back roads to avoid checkpoints, Mr. Zelaya and his wife took refuge at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital. He did not say which country he crossed into Honduras from.

At the embassy, he gave a series of interviews with the international news media, saying that he hoped to begin meeting with “prominent Hondurans” and members of the de facto government that ousted him to find an end to the crisis that has engulfed the country since he was exiled on June 28.

“We ask those in the coup government to think and to come to dialogue with us,” he told Al Jazeera’s English network.

His return appeared to have caught the de facto government by surprise. Roberto Micheletti, who was appointed president by Congress, at first denied that Mr. Zelaya had returned, calling the reports “media terrorism.”

But on Monday evening, after imposing a nationwide curfew, he acknowledged Mr. Zelaya’s presence but said it “changes nothing of our reality.” He called on Brazil to hand Mr. Zelaya over for arrest and trial.

“We are waiting for him,” Mr. Micheletti said in a news conference earlier in the day. “A court is ready to proceed against him legally, and a jail is also ready.”

The de facto government has said that Mr. Zelaya would be arrested if he tried to return, citing 18 charges against him, including treason.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday evening that the two sides must find a way to talk. “It’s imperative that dialogue begin,” she said. “It’s also imperative that the return of President Zelaya does not lead to any conflict or violence, but instead that everyone act in a peaceful way to try to find some common ground.”

President Óscar Arias of Costa Rica, who has led the international negotiations on Honduras, offered to go to Honduras to mediate if he were asked.

Mr. Arias and Mrs. Clinton were meeting in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting there.

Brazil’s foreign minister, Celso Amorim, also in New York, denied that Brazil had helped plan the return of Mr. Zelaya and his wife, Xiomara Castro, to Honduras. He said they had arrived at the embassy through “their own peaceful methods.”

Mr. Amorim did not say whether there was a time limit on Mr. Zelaya’s stay in the embassy, but he stressed that the Organization of American States should renew efforts to negotiate a solution. “If the O.A.S. doesn’t work to give guarantees to a democratically elected government, in the case of a coup like this, then what is the O.A.S. for?” he said.

Delegates from the organization met late Monday in Washington to discuss the crisis.

Mr. Zelaya has accepted a proposal offered by Mr. Arias that would restore him to the presidency with limited powers and grant an amnesty on all sides. Mr. Micheletti has rejected it.

As the talks have stalled and the international community has turned its attention elsewhere, Mr. Zelaya has grown impatient.

Since the coup, he has tried to return to Honduras at least twice. A week after the coup, he tried to fly into the Tegucigalpa airport, but soldiers massed on the tarmac and blocked his plane from landing.

In July, he set up camp with his supporters just over the border in Nicaragua, and stepped briefly into Honduran territory before returning to Nicaragua. Rumors that Mr. Zelaya was already in the country, or was about to return, have circulated through the capital repeatedly since then.

The curfew was announced just 30 minutes before it took effect at 4 p.m. Monday, sending residents of the capital rushing to get home and tying traffic in knots, residents said.

At the time of his removal, Mr. Zelaya was planning a nonbinding referendum that his opponents said would have been the first step toward allowing him to run for another term in office, which is forbidden under the Honduran Constitution. Mr. Zelaya has denied any attempt to run for re-election.

No country has recognized the de facto government of Mr. Micheletti. President Obama and other leaders in the hemisphere have insisted that Mr. Zelaya be returned to office, contending that he was removed in a coup. The United States, the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have all suspended aid to Honduras in protest.

But the Micheletti government has stood fast, insisting that Mr. Zelaya was removed from office legally. Mr. Micheletti has promised to hand over power to a new president who will be elected in national elections scheduled for Nov. 29.

Alexei Barrionuevo contributed reporting from New York.

Zelaya Speaks - Nation

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By Tom Hayden

September 4, 2009

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Zelaya points to a State Department document as he speaks to the media following his meeting with Clinton on September 3, 2009.

In a significant development in hemispheric relations, the Obama admininstration yesterday condemned the June 28 Honduras coup d'état more strongly than ever, announced the cutoff of additional millions in economic aid and declared it would not accept the legitimacy of elections under the auspices of the coup government.

In an interview shortly after his meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Honduran president Manuel Zelaya pronounced the US decisions "a great step forward" for the Honduran popular resistance to the coup and a "positive message in favor of democracy."

Following the State Department meeting, a US spokesperson announced the termination of "a broad range of assistance" to Honduras as a spur to encourage the return of President Zelaya and democratic processes to the country, which has been under repression for two months.

Zelaya told The Nation that the US would terminate multi-year Millennium Challenge grants in the range of $200 million, involving funds for roads, ports and infrastructure. Clinton chairs the Millennium Challenge corporation, which meets next week.

Asked if Clinton intended a message to the coup regime in Honduras, Zelaya responded forcefully that it was a "direct blow in the face of [Roberto] Micheletti" because "the golpistas' [coup organizers] plan was to negotiate with the candidates for an exit strategy so that they don't have to pay for their crimes, and get away with their crimes after an election. When you don't recognize the legitimacy of the elections, you are breaking up the plan of the golpistas."

With these decisions, the Obama administration has made clear that it embraces the Latin American consensus that the coup was an illegitimate transfer of power. "Mexico, Central and Latin America already had taken a position on the elections. We were only missing the United States. Now in light of these statements, the entire continent is condemning these elections under the de facto regime," Zelaya said.

When probed on the conditions when the sanctions might be lifted, Zelaya said only "when democracy is restored and President Zelaya returns." He said he is "prepared to return independently of any US plans" in order to "protect the population."

There will be "a permanent convulsion" and a "permanently ungovernable country" if he cannot return, and "that's what everybody wants to avoid." The social movements in Honduras "are not willing to go back to the way things were before," he noted.

What the June 28 coup was able to prevent, for now, was an advisory referendum planned for three days later on whether there should be a constituent assembly to rewrite the Honduras constitution, promoting greater participatory democracy. But the same coup also provoked the rise of a new social movement with its own dedicated members, martyrs and new memories.

"The grassroots movement," Zelaya said, has only one purpose, the transformation of Honduras, including deep structural changes. "This movement is now very strong. It can never be destroyed," he said. Zelaya believes that the reforms of his administration, including an increased minimum wage, subsidies to small farmers, cuts in bank interest rates and reductions in poverty levels "are the causes which irritated the ruling elite of Honduras."

Zelaya said he hopes that Clinton understands that "the same opponents of Obama in the US are mine in Honduras. The transnational trade, oil and banking systems. Those who do not want health insurance here are the same as those who do not want to pay a living wage in Honduras."

For example, he pointed out, "during Bush there was no coup. The coup in Honduras during the first six months of the Obama presidency was a litmus test. The right-wing groups in America who are supporting the coup are betting that Obama will not solve the problem. I trust that that he will."

Warming to the point, Zelaya went on to argue that the coup plotters in Honduras "have copied some reactionary sectors in Washington," who publicly say that Obama "has no power, that he is weak, weaker than Jimmy Carter, that we should not pay any attention to the Obama administration, and they refer to him as the black boy who doesn't know where Tegucigalpa is."

But the right-wing groups from Latin America to the Beltway have employed a Democrat and ardent Clinton supporter, Lanny Davis, to lobby for their interests in the capital, or what Zelaya calls "the empire of capital." Democratic consultants also are sprinkled in the coup delegations to the Costa Rican talks.

Perhaps no lobbyist is closer to the Clintons than Lanny Davis. When his name was raised critically by Zelaya during the meeting, the secretary of state did not acknowledge that Davis was her longtime family ally but instead took notes on Zelaya's claim of Davis's false charges and promised to investigate them. "She didn't tell me what she would investigate," he added, with a good-natured chuckle.

For Clinton's State Department, the tone of the meeting marked a shift from frosty previous statements on the coup. After Obama's initial observation that an undemocratic coup had taken place, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said that a coup had not taken place, in legal terms, and ridiculed Zelaya for being allied with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. "If that is the lesson that President Zelaya has learned from this episode," he remarked amidst laughter in a July State Department briefing, "that would be a good lesson." On August 4, a State Department letter to Senator Richard Lugar said Zelaya's "insistence on taking provocative actions...led to a confrontation that unleashed the events that led to his removal." The term coup d'état was not used in the letter.

Asked yesterday by The Nation whether the State Department certified what happened as a coup d'état or was calling it a coup, Zelaya responded, "I do not know the details of US law, but in the communiqué issued today the United States on behalf of the State Department said that in relation to the coup in Honduras various parts of the Honduran government are involved: the legislative, judicial and military. The State Department directly implicates the Congress, the army and the Court of Honduras in the coup."

Whatever Lanny Davis's spin may be, yesterday's developments represent a sharp rejection by the Obama administration of going it alone in Latin America.

The State Department's Crowley was not present at the meeting yesterday, which included longtime Latin American diplomat Tom Shannon, National Security Council representative Dan Restrepo, US ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens, and a different public relations spokesman, Ian Kelly.

The present tension may be winding down, but it is not over. Micheletti, abandoned by the Americans in his quest to legitimize the coup, is under enormous pressure to accept the recommendation of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias that he step down, which would be a huge victory for Latin America. On the other hand, any return to Honduras by Zelaya could be volatile, with the right-wing wanting his arrest or even his death. He cannot run for re-election under the present constitution. There is no visible candidate to replace him, and the constituent assembly proposal is off the agenda for now (or "por ahora", as a young Hugo Chávez once said upon release from prison).

The future may lie with the social movements that have risen against the military coup, with Zelaya serving as a transitional hero to the mobilized and awakened people on the streets of Honduras who are trying to take an unpredictable future into their own hands.

About Tom Hayden

Tom Hayden is a former California state senator and author of Street Wars (Verso, 2005).

IMF: stop funding Honduras - guardian.co.uk

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by Mark Weisbrot

The IMF is undergoing an unprecedented expansion of its access to resources, possibly reaching a trillion dollars. This week the EU committed $175bn, $67bn more than even the $108bn that Washington agreed to fork over after a tense stand-off between the US Congress and the Obama administration earlier this summer.

The Fund and its advocates argue that the IMF has changed. The IMF is "back in a new guise", says the Economist. This time, we are told, it's really going to act as a multilateral organisation that looks out for the countries and people of the world, and not just for Washington, Wall Street or European banks.

But it's looking more and more like the same old IMF on steroids. Last week the IMF disbursed $150m to the de facto government of Honduras, and it plans to disburse another $13.8m on 9 September. The de facto government has no legitimacy in the world. It took power on 28 June in a military coup, in which the elected President Manuel Zelaya was taken from his home at gunpoint and flown out of the country.

The Organisation of American States suspended Honduras until democracy is restored, and the UN also called for the "immediate and unconditional return" of the elected president.

No country in the world recognises the coup government of Honduras. From the western hemisphere and the EU, only the US retains an ambassador there. The World Bank paused lending to Honduras two days after the coup, and the Inter-American Development Bank did the same the next day. More recently the Central American Bank of Economic Integration suspended credit to Honduras. The EU has suspended over $90m in aid as well, and is considering further sanctions.

But the IMF has gone ahead and dumped a large amount of money on Honduras – the equivalent would be more than $160bn in the US – as though everything is OK there.

This is in keeping with US policy, which is not surprising since the US has been – since the IMF's creation in 1944 – the Fund's principal overseer. Washington made a symbolic gesture earlier this year by cutting off about $18.5m to Honduras, and the state department announced on Thursday that it is terminating other assistance.

But more than two months after the Honduran military overthrew the elected president of Honduras, the US government has yet to determine that a military coup has actually occurred. This is because such a determination would require, under the US Foreign Appropriations Act, a complete cutoff of aid.

One of the largest sources of US aid is the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a government entity whose board is chaired by Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state.

Interestingly, there were two military coups in the last year in countries that were receiving MCC money: Madagascar and Mauritania. In both of those cases MCC aid was suspended within three days of the coup.

The IMF's decision to give money to the Honduran government is reminiscent of its reaction to the 2002 coup that temporarily overthrew President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. Just a few hours after that coup, the IMF's spokesperson announced: "We stand ready to assist the new administration in whatever manner they find suitable."

This immediate pledge of support by the IMF to a military-installed government was at the time unprecedented. Given the resources and power of the IMF, it was an important source of international legitimacy for the coup government. Members of the US Congress later wrote to the IMF to inquire how this happened. How did the IMF decide so quickly to support this illegitimate government?

The Fund responded that no decision was made, that this was just an off-the-cuff remark by its spokesperson. But this seems very unlikely, and in the video on the IMF's website, the spokesperson appears to be reading from a prepared statement when talking about money for the coup government.

In the Honduran case, the IMF would likely say that the current funds are part of a $250bn package in which all member countries are receiving a share proportional to their IMF quota, regardless of governance. This is true, but it doesn't resolve the question as to whom the funds should be disbursed to, in the case of a non-recognised, illegitimate government that has seized power by force. The Fund could very easily postpone disbursing this money until some kind of determination could be made, rather than simply acting as though there were no question about the legitimacy of the coup government.

Interestingly, the IMF had no problem cutting off funds under its standby arrangement with the democratically elected government of President Zelaya in November of last year, when the Fund did not agree with his economic policies.

We're still a long way from a reformed IMF.

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Battle for Honduras--and the Region - Nation

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Roberto Micheletti, who took power in Honduras following the June 28 coup, has come under intense criticism from the international community for rejecting a compromise, negotiated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, that would allow Manuel Zelaya, the democratically elected president forced into exile by the military, to return as head of a reconciliation government. But Micheletti's obstinacy is encouraged by those who see the crisis as a chance to halt the advance of the Latin American left. A month and a half after Zelaya's overthrow, the small, desperately poor Central American country has become the site of a larger battle that could shape hemispheric politics, including Barack Obama's foreign policy, for years to come.

In the 1980s Honduras served as a staging ground for Ronald Reagan's anticommunist operations in neighboring Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala and as a portal for New Right Christians to roll back liberation theology. Central America's anticommunist crusade became something of a death-squad Da Vinci Code, pulling together a carnivalesque cast that included first-generation neocons, Latin American torturers, local oligarchs, anti-Castro Cubans, mercenaries, Opus Dei ideologues and pulpit-thumping evangelicals.

The campaign to oust Zelaya and prevent his restoration has reunited old comrades from that struggle, including shadowy figures like Fernando "Billy" Joya (who in the 1980s was a member of Battalion 316, a Honduran paramilitary unit responsible for the disappearance of hundreds, and who now works as Micheletti's security adviser) and Iran/Contra veterans like Otto Reich (who ran Reagan's Office of Public Diplomacy, which misused public money to manipulate public opinion to support the Contra war against Nicaragua). The Honduran generals who deposed Zelaya received their military training at the height of the region's dirty wars, including courses at the notorious School of the Americas. And the current crisis reveals a familiar schism between conservative Catholic hierarchs and evangelical Protestants who back the coup, on the one hand, and progressive Christians who are being hounded by security forces, on the other.

Joining the coup coalition are new actors like Venezuelan Robert Carmona-Borjas, who was involved in the 2002 attempt to overthrow Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. According to Latin American analyst Laura Carlsen, Carmona, working closely with Reich, turned his attentions to Honduras after having failed to halt the electoral success of the left in Venezuela. Starting in 2007, Carmona's Arcadia Foundation launched a press campaign to discredit Zelaya by accusing his government of widespread graft. As Carlsen writes, the "politicized nature of Arcadia's anti-corruption offensive was clear from the start. Carmona, along with Otto Reich, charged President Zelaya of complicity" in assorted misdeeds. The crusade was similar to the way International Republican Institute-linked "democracy promotion" groups destabilized the government of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, resulting in his overthrow in 2004.

Also fresh to the fight is Lanny Davis, a former Hillary Clinton adviser turned lobbyist, who was hired by business backers of the coup to push the Clinton State Department to recognize the Micheletti government. The Clinton wing of the Democratic Party has deep ties to Latin American neoliberals who presided over ruinous policies of market liberalization in the 1990s, now largely displaced from office by the region's new leftists. Clinton pollsters and consultants, such as Stanley Greenberg and Doug Schoen, have worked on a number of their presidential campaigns, often on the losing side.

Three years ago the region, locked into the US sphere of influence by the Central American Free Trade Agreement, seemed immune to the changes taking place in South America, which had brought leftists to power in a majority of countries. But then the Sandinistas returned to office in Nicaragua in 2006. Recently, the FMLN won the presidency in El Salvador, and Guatemala, led by center-left President Álvaro Colom, is witnessing a resurgence of peasant activism, much of it against transnational mining and biofuel corporations.

In Honduras, Zelaya shook things up by raising the minimum wage and apologizing for the executions of street children and gang members carried out by security forces in the 1990s. He moved to reduce the US military presence and refused to privatize Hondutel, the state-owned telecommunications firm, a deal that Micheletti, as president of Congress, pushed. Zelaya also vetoed legislation, likewise supported by Micheletti, that would have banned sale of the morning-after pill. Considering Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's shameful support of the Catholic Church's position on abortion, which resulted in legislation mandating up to thirty-year jail terms for women who receive them, this was perhaps Zelaya's most courageous move. He also accepted foreign aid, in the form of low-cost petroleum, from Venezuela. It would be impossible to overstate the Central American ruling class's hatred of Chávez, whose hand is seen behind every peasant protest and every call to democratize the region's politics and economics. The president of a Honduran business council recently said Chávez "had Honduras in his mouth. He was a cat with a mouse that got away."

The fixation on Chávez usefully diverts attention from the gnawing poverty in the region, as well as from the failure of the neoliberal economic model promoted by Washington in recent decades. Forty percent of Central Americans, and more than 50 percent of Hondurans, live in poverty. The Chávez mania also distracts from the fact that under Washington's equally disastrous "war on drugs," crime cartels, deeply rooted in the military and traditional oligarchic families, have rendered much of Central America into what the Washington Office on Latin America calls "captive states."

For the White House, Honduras is proving to be an unexpectedly difficult foreign-policy test. After condemning the coup, Obama handed the crisis to the State Department. Rather than working with the Organization of American States (OAS), Secretary of State Clinton unilaterally charged Oscar Arias with brokering a compromise, ignoring the concerns of most other Latin American governments that negotiations would grant too much legitimacy to the coup. Clinton has so far been unwilling to apply a range of possible sanctions, including freezing the bank accounts of those who carried out the coup, to force Micheletti to accept the Arias plan. And for those who see Micheletti as the last line against the spread of Chavismo--be it in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador or elsewhere in the Americas--the return of Zelaya, even just to finish the few months left in his term, is unacceptable.

In the late 1970s the Sandinista revolution revealed the limits of Jimmy Carter's tolerance of Third World nationalism. The more Carter tried to appease hawks in his administration, the more he was accused of vacillating, thus paving the way for neoconservatives, under Reagan, to use Central America to showcase their hard line.

A similar dynamic is taking place today. Republicans have rallied around Micheletti, sending a Congressional delegation led by Connie Mack to visit Tegucigalpa. Taking a page out of the Latin American right's playbook, they have redbaited Obama by associating him with Chávez. Obama, said Texas Senator John Cornyn, "must stand with the Honduran people, not with Hugo Chávez." It's the kind of grandstanding that Republicans, absent a domestic agenda, have come to rely on. Venezuela's position on Honduras is identical to that of Brazil and Chile--and, for that matter, the European Union. But the right-wing attacks are effective, largely because self-described liberals repeatedly indulge in the demonization not just of Chávez, as Lanny Davis recently did, but of leftists like Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador.

In early August the State Department seemed to give ground to Republicans, stating in a letter to Republican Senator Richard Lugar that Zelaya's "provocative actions...unleashed the events that led to his removal." This statement, as well as other tepid efforts to pressure Micheletti, bodes ill for the Obama administration's willingness to stand up to right-wing pressure.

Obama himself continues to send mixed signals. At an August summit in Guadalajara of the presidents of Mexico, Canada and the United States, he complained that "critics who say that the United States has not intervened enough in Honduras are the same people who say that we're always intervening and the Yankees need to get out of Latin America. You can't have it both ways." However, no one in Latin America is asking for unilateral US intervention but rather for Washington to work multilaterally with the OAS. By deputizing Oscar Arias, the United States effectively undermined the OAS. On the same day Obama made these remarks, South American presidents, meeting in Quito, Ecuador, reaffirmed their condemnation of the coup and said they will not recognize any president elected under the current regime--a step Clinton's State Department has refused to take.

The failure to restore Zelaya to power will send a clear message to Latin American conservatives that Washington will tolerate coups, provided they are carried out under a democratic guise. As historian Miguel Tinker Salas recently observed in an essay published on Common Dreams, they already sense that Honduras might be a turning point. A conservative businessman recently won the presidency in Panama. In June in Argentina, Cristina Fernández's center-left Peronist party suffered a midterm electoral defeat and lost control of Congress. And polls show that presidential elections coming up in Chile and Brazil will be close, possibly dealing further losses to the left.

In the meantime, Zelaya is rallying supporters from abroad to press for his return. In Honduras, protests continue and the body count climbs. At least eleven Zelaya supporters have been killed since the coup took place. The latest, Martín Florencio Rivera, was stabbed to death as he left a wake held for another victim. Micheletti, for his part, is hunkered down in Tegucigalpa, betting he can leverage international support to last until regularly scheduled presidential elections in November. The future course of Latin American politics may hang in the balance.

About Greg Grandin

Greg Grandin, a professor of history at New York University, is the author, most recently, of Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City (Metropolitan). He serves on the editorial committee of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA)

For U.S. and OAS, New Challenges to Latin American Democracy

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 6, 2009

The Obama administration has signaled its support for democracy in Latin America by condemning the coup in Honduras, reducing military cooperation and joining with other countries in the hemisphere yesterday in a rare suspension of a nation from the Organization of American States.

But bayonet-wielding soldiers are not the biggest threat to democracy in the region, where more than a dozen presidents have been removed prematurely since 1990. In recent years, a crop of elected, authoritarian-minded leaders has packed courts with supporters, held dubious elections and curtailed press freedoms. Legislatures have also pushed the boundaries of democratic order, giving legal cover to "civilian coups" in which protest groups have forced the ouster of presidents.

"The threats against democracy in Latin America, and I don't in any way minimize what's happened in Honduras . . . are not those coming from military coups, but rather from governments which are ignoring checks and balances, overriding other elements of government," said Jeffrey Davidow, a retired U.S. ambassador who served as President Obama's special adviser for the recent Summit of the Americas.

But it has been difficult for the U.S. government and regional bodies to respond to constitutional crises that fall short of a coup. Although the OAS has launched a determined effort to reinstate Manuel Zelaya as Honduran president, it has reacted more mildly to other irregular changes of power and to abuses by presidents and congresses.

Zelaya set out in a plane for Honduras yesterday, ignoring warnings from U.S. diplomats and representatives of many Latin American countries that his arrival could provoke a clash. The Honduran government declared it would not let him land, and his plane instead went on Nicaragua. Zelaya is likely to return to Washington soon to discuss further efforts to end the standoff, U.S. officials said.

The Honduran crisis began as a clash among institutions. Zelaya defied his country's Supreme Court by proceeding with a non-binding poll on writing a new constitution that many believed would scrap term limits, allowing him to seek a second term next year.

The coup that removed him brought back ugly memories of the 1960s and 1970s, when Latin American generals seized power and ruthlessly repressed opponents. But events in Honduras reflected how that old model has changed: The military quickly recognized a new civilian president sworn in by the country's Congress. Honduran lawmakers overwhelmingly voted June 28 to remove Zelaya after he was bundled onto a plane to Costa Rica.

Jennifer McCoy, head of the Americas Program at the Carter Center, said the international community has rarely insisted on the reinstatement of a toppled president in Latin America in recent years, with the United States and other countries generally calling for new elections or other constitutional mechanisms.

This time, though, the sight of soldiers hauling off a pajama-clad president was too much. The Obama administration joined the chorus of condemnation, despite its frustrations with Zelaya, who belongs to a group of vociferously anti-American leaders allied with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

The strong reaction to the coup might "put to rest the temptation to resort to the military, once and for all," McCoy said. "But we're now in a different context of democratic frameworks in Latin America. It doesn't mean a crisis won't arise. It's just the nature of the crises are different. And we haven't figured out how to deal with them."

The Obama administration's reaction reflects lessons learned in a 2002 coup against Chávez. The Bush administration was widely seen as tacitly welcoming that maneuver. But the coup collapsed within two days, and U.S. proclamations of support for democracy in the hemisphere suddenly rang hollow.

"We were on the wrong side. We paid for it in a host of ways, both bilaterally, in the region, but also in the OAS," said Peter Romero, a former assistant secretary of state in charge of Latin America.

Obama's declaration last week that the Honduran coup was "illegal" and a "terrible precedent" won him plaudits in a region where the U.S. government has been losing influence. Obama has been courting Latin America and the Caribbean, pledging an "equal partnership" with them at the hemispheric summit in April, instead of the United States playing its traditionally dominant role.

The U.S. government response to the Honduras crisis has been nuanced, however. It has not withdrawn its ambassador, and the administration did not grant Zelaya a White House meeting during his visits to Washington last week.

In a boost for U.S. policy, the OAS handled the crisis by turning to the Inter-American Democratic Charter it adopted in 2001. The charter commits countries to elections, press freedoms and human rights, but it has often been ignored. U.S. diplomats fought an uphill battle last month in an OAS assembly to have the document shape the decision on whether to readmit Cuba after a 47-year ban.

With the Honduran crisis, the OAS for the first time invoked a part of the charter that can suspend a country for an interruption of democratic order.

"This is a dramatic move by the OAS. It underscores its commitment to democracy," said a senior U.S. official who took part in the marathon OAS sessions last week.

Some critics question why the OAS did not do more in recent months when Zelaya plunged ahead with an illegal referendum, even firing the military chief for refusing to order soldiers to hand out ballots.

"There doesn't seem to be any political will to confront the caudillismo that is re-emerging in the hemisphere," said Roger Noriega, a senior policymaker on Latin America under the Bush administration, using the Spanish term for strongman tendencies. The Bush administration sought to give the OAS a bigger role in monitoring democratic practices, but member countries rejected it, concerned about interference in their internal affairs.

The region's strong reaction to the Honduran coup contrasts with its limited response to the situation in Venezuela. Over the past decade, Chávez has taken control of the courts, the armed forces and all oversight agencies; curtailed anti-government media; and launched criminal investigations of opposition politicians.

Ecuador has gone through a string of constitutional standoffs, with three presidents ousted between 1996 and 2006 by a combination of public protests and dissident soldiers and lawmakers. Nicaragua was stuck in political gridlock for months after local elections in 2008 that were considered fraudulent by the opposition and were criticized by international monitors.

"This is what we're facing in Latin America today -- as their democracies mature, we're seeing these conflicts between institutions of government," McCoy said. "We need to deal with that before they turn into these full-blown crises. We still have not learned to do that successfully."

Zelaya's Plane Not Allowed to Land in Honduras

By William Booth and Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 6, 2009

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, July 5 -- In a high-stakes standoff that played out in the skies over Honduras, the airplane carrying ousted president Manuel Zelaya was forced to circle the nation's main airport twice before flying away Sunday evening after coup leaders who deposed Zelaya blocked his landing with troops on the runway.

The turn-back of Zelaya's white jet left thousands of his supporters shouting in disappointment and anger. Minutes earlier, security forces fired tear gas and bullets at the crowd to keep demonstrators away from the airport, which was surrounded by soldiers and military vehicles.

The Red Cross said people 30 people were wounded in the melee, but there were conflicting reports about fatalities. An Associated Press photographer reported that one man was shot in the head.

Immediately after Zelaya's plane flew away, Honduran air force helicopters and aircraft appeared over Tegucigalpa, the capital. Zelaya, who had repeatedly vowed to return to his country, later landed in Managua, Nicaragua.

The aerial standoff, which took place at sunset, punctuated a crisis that has gripped this country of 7 million for the past week. The entire hemisphere, including the United States, has been drawn into a bitter political brawl in Honduras between the leftist Zelaya and his conservative opponents that shows no sign of ending soon.

Zelaya was deposed June 28 in a military-backed coup that has been condemned throughout the Americas but has frustrated diplomats in the Obama administration, who have not been able to persuade the Honduran coup leaders to back down. The leaders of the new Honduran government say Zelaya is guilty of treason for advocating a change to the constitution that would allow a president to serve more than one term. The coup backers also fear Zelaya's close ties with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

The government of Roberto Micheletti, the de facto president, had warned Sunday that it would refuse to allow Zelaya to land at any airport in Honduras and ordered the military to turn the plane back. A Honduran aviation official said the restrictions applied only to Zelaya and his entourage. But the order effectively shut down air traffic across the country for the day. Flights from all major carriers in and out of the nation were canceled.

Zelaya took off for Honduras from Washington's Dulles International Airport about 3 p.m., followed by a plane carrying the presidents of Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay, as well as the secretary general of the Organization of American States, according to senior Obama administration officials.

Zelaya and the other presidents flew in different planes for safety reasons -- and because the other leaders were expecting Zelaya to mount his face-off over Tegucigalpa.

Zelaya was accompanied only by top advisers, a Nicaraguan priest and U.N. General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann. Also aboard his plane was Venezuelan state television network Telesur, which broadcast live interviews with Zelaya from 35,000 feet.

"Today I feel like I have sufficient spiritual strength, blessed with the blood of Christ, to be able to arrive there and raise the crucifix," he said in one live transmission.

He insisted that he remained commander in chief of the Honduran military and pleaded with troops to allow him to land.

As his plane circled the airport, Zelaya narrated his approach live on Telesur. "I am here with the two pilots. They are doing what is humanly possible to approach the landing strip. They do not want to land with obstacles in the way," he said. "What is happening here is a barbarity."

Thousands of his supporters surrounded the international airport in the Honduran capital. Hundreds of police officers and soldiers in riot gear kept the crowds away from the terminal.

As word spread that Zelaya's plane was coming, the crowds pressed against the police barricades. Soldiers or police fired tear gas, and shots were heard.

Asked why his government did not allow Zelaya to land and then arrest him, as officials have repeatedly threatened, Micheletti said that kind of publicity could incite violence.

"When Zelaya is prepared to turn himself in quietly, he can do so," he said.

Micheletti said in a news conference that Nicaraguan troops were massing at the border with Honduras.

"I want to ask the country of Nicaragua, our brothers, not to cross our borders, because we are ready to defend our country. If there are acts of war against our country, there will be bloodshed," he said.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega dismissed the charges of troop movement as "totally false." Critics of the de facto Micheletti government said the rumors of a war with Nicaragua were propaganda intended to consolidate power for the new regime by introducing an illusory external threat.

Pressed on the Nicaraguan confrontation, Micheletti conceded that "it is a small number of troops, without the support of their commanders, and they haven't crossed the border, and they are not in a position to strike against Honduras."

U.S. officials said they were not aware of any Nicaraguan troop movements toward its border.

Senior Obama administration officials, briefing reporters earlier Sunday, said that if Zelaya's plane were not allowed to land in Honduras, he probably would return to Washington for consultations with the OAS, possibly as early as Monday.

Zelaya, however, said he would try to return home Monday or Tuesday.

U.S. officials confirmed that Honduras's de facto government had sent a message to the OAS seeking to open negotiations, a move that one official described as positive.

"We think this could create the basis for continuing movement by the OAS on diplomatic initiatives," one official said. However, he said the hemispheric body would still insist that Zelaya be allowed to return and serve out the rest of his term, which ends in January.

Zelaya left Washington after the OAS voted in a late meeting Saturday to suspend Honduras, putting in jeopardy about $200 million in loans the Central American country receives from the Inter-American Development Bank. In addition, U.S. military and development aid has been "put on pause," the official said, and military cooperation has been limited.

Representatives of many countries at the OAS meeting -- including the United States -- urged Zelaya not to fly back to Honduras, saying the move was dangerous for him and his supporters.

"Given the situation in Honduras, we did not see how this was going to assist in creating a political space for dialogue. But at the same time, we respect the right of President Zelaya as a Honduran citizen, and the legal and constitutional leader of Honduras, to make his own decisions," the U.S. official said.

Sheridan reported from Washington.

U.S. Misread Scale of Honduran Rift

By William Booth and Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 5, 2009


TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, July 4 -- Although the U.S. government knew for months that Honduras was on the brink of political chaos, officials say they underestimated how fearful the Honduran elite and the military were of ousted President Manuel Zelaya and his ally President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

Rumors were buzzing in the capital that the fight between Zelaya and his conservative opponents had reached the boiling point, but diplomatic officials said the Obama administration and its embassy were surprised when Honduran soldiers burst into the presidential palace last Sunday and removed Zelaya from power.

U.S. diplomats had been trying to broker a compromise and were speaking to both sides hours before the coup. For decades, Washington has trained the Honduran military, and senior U.S. officials say they did not think that the Honduran military would carry out a coup.

The overthrow, and the new Honduran government's vow to remain in power despite international condemnation, is President Obama's first test in a region that had grown distant from the United States.

The crisis also pits Obama's nuanced approach to diplomacy against that of an often bellicose rival, Chávez, who has taken center stage in the showdown by threatening to overthrow the government that took over from Zelaya.

The new Honduran leaders said Saturday that they will not yield to demands made by the Organization of American States to allow Zelaya to return to power. The caretaker president, Roberto Micheletti, threatened that Zelaya will be arrested if he returns Sunday as promised alongside Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and other Latin American leaders.

The Catholic Church appealed for calm. Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez went on the airwaves to beg Zelaya to "give us room for a peaceful resolution" and warned that, if Zelaya comes back Sunday, there could be "a bloodbath."

A Shift to the Left

When Zelaya, 56, a wealthy rancher whose family made its fortune from timber, was elected president in 2005, he was a middle-of-the-road populist from one of Honduras's two major parties. But as his presidency progressed, Zelaya veered to the left and was in constant conflict with business groups, lawmakers from his own party, the news media and the army.

"Over the last year, Zelaya's positions moved to the left. He pushed social programs and more attention for the poor who have no work," said Giuseppe Magno, the outgoing Italian ambassador. "This switch was not in line with the program he was voted in on. He was too close to Ortega and Chávez, a position the middle and upper classes did not appreciate."

But Zelaya saw it differently, often telling crowds that Honduras needed a fundamental shift to deal with poverty so grinding that 40 percent of the population lives on $2 a day or less. Honduras is, in fact, the third-poorest country in the hemisphere, and many residents continue to resent the often painful past involvement of the United States.

In announcing his country's affiliation with a Chávez-led alliance, Zelaya told crowds that it was designed to "make Hondurans a free people." He said that in joining the pact, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, Honduras did "not have to ask permission of any imperialists."

Zelaya increasingly spoke of the two nations of Honduras, one hopelessly poor, the other wealthy and uncaring. He began to argue for "people power," a kind of direct popular democracy.

When he toured the countryside, he staged rallies to ask the people what they wanted, and promised new bridges and clinics on the spot, giving away 100 Venezuelan tractors to farmers and speaking against an unnamed oligarchy he called the enemy of the people.

Zelaya angered the business community when he raised the minimum monthly wage for Hondurans by 60 percent. Many companies responded by firing workers. Other businesses ignored the decree.

When U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens arrived last year, Zelaya postponed the ceremony allowing the newly arrived diplomat to present his credentials. He fought with his Congress, insisting that lawmakers accept his nominees to the Supreme Court. He refused to sign the budget and he stalled on dozens of bills approved by the Congress. All along, Zelaya grew closer to Latin America's leftist leaders, especially Chávez. He traveled frequently to Venezuela, where he stood beside Chávez as he gave fiery speeches railing against capitalists.

But Adolfo Facussé, a business leader who had been friends with Zelaya, said the president at first explained his alliance with Venezuela in pragmatic, economic terms.

"He said a year ago that he was interested in ALBA," said Facussé, speaking of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, which included Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua. "I said it's mostly an anti-American enterprise, and he said that's not what interests me. There is assistance being offered."

Facussé said that he invited Venezuelan Embassy officials to meet with Honduran industrialists, adding that it became clear to him and other businessmen that Honduras could benefit from Venezuela's largess, including the sale of fuel on preferential terms, a line of credit from Caracas and outright gifts, such as tractors.

"I reviewed the deal, and I thought it was good," Facussé said of Zelaya's plan to bring Honduras closer to Chávez and his cheap fuel.

'So Brazen, So Upfront'

European diplomats who know Zelaya and how he operates described him as a populist nationalist, not an leftist ideologue.

Those familiar with the growing crisis said concern about Chávez by political opponents was driven by an outsize fear that Venezuela had diabolical designs on Honduras -- and would have implanted Chávez's economic system and style of governance had Zelaya been allowed to carry out his referendum.

"It was the same scheme Chávez had in Venezuela," said Benjamin Bogran, the new minister of industry and commerce. "Chávez considers Honduras to be inside his orbit."

Elizabeth Zuñiga, a member of Congress and leader of the Nationalist Party, said: "Little by little, step by step, he was looking at the South Americans for help and guidance. They were his new best friends." Zuñiga, who supports the ouster, said, "What I believe we were seeing was the evolution of a democratic dictatorship."

Armando Sarmiento, a member of the ousted Zelaya cabinet, who is in hiding, said the fear of Chávez and his influence on Zelaya lead to the coup. "The right wing believes the myth that President Zelaya was going to seek an extra term. But this was not true."

Sarmiento pointed out that Zelaya wanted to help the country's poor, not nationalize industries or create a socialist economy. "President Zelaya had very strong arguments with these people, what the president called the oligarchy, the media, the special interests. There were campaigns of hatred against the president."

Doris Gutiérrez, a member of Congress who opposes the coup, said: "The sector here that supports the move against Zelaya has never been so open, so brazen, so upfront before. The situation is going to become more dangerous."

'The Political Nucleus'

Analysts familiar with Zelaya's cabinet said he was influenced by a small group of close aides. They included Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas, viewed as an ally of Ortega's Sandinista government in Nicaragua and daughter of a popular progressive politician who fled the country after a military coup in 1963. Others included Milton Jiménez, a former foreign minister who analysts said had the most influence on Zelaya; Enrique Flores Lanza, Zelaya's minister of the presidency and considered the most radical of his aides; and Aristides Mejía, Zelaya's vice president.

"They were the political nucleus, the ideologues of Manuel Zelaya," said Jorge Yllescas, an economist who is a member of Civic Union, a coalition of 60 groups opposed to Zelaya. "They were the ones who really had the ideological line. When Mel got to the presidency, he was liberal, but within a year he had a different tendency from his own ideology."

But the same diplomats are puzzled about exactly what Zelaya was after in his attempt to rewrite the constitution. The boiling point came when Zelaya began to push for a national survey, a kind of nonbinding referendum for a constitutional assembly that could led to a new law that allowed a president to serve more than one term. But Honduras's lengthy, sometimes contradictory document contains language that makes a person a traitor for even suggesting such a change.

As Zelaya pressed ahead with his plan to hold the vote last Sunday, the day of the coup, the leader of the Honduran military, Gen. Romeo Vásquez, balked, because the Supreme Court told him that the referendum was illegal. Zelaya tried to fire Vásquez, which further riled the military.

"Look, we're democratic and here we respect the ideologies of other countries," said Gabriela Nuñez, the new finance minister. "But we do not want to change our system of government."

Honduran Crisis Offers Venezuala's Chavez Some Domestic, International Openings

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 2, 2009

CARACAS, Venezuela, July 1 -- An ally was in trouble, toppled in a military coup. And the television cameras were rolling.

The ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya could not have been better scripted for another Latin American leader who has taken center stage: Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. The populist firebrand has been Zelaya's most forceful advocate and could win international accolades if the Honduran eventually succeeds in regaining power.

Ever since Zelaya was hustled into exile Sunday by the military, Chávez has been a whirlwind of activity. Using Venezuela's oil-fueled influence to organize summits at which he has been the central speaker, he is spreading his vision of Latin America and calling for Hondurans to rise up against those who deposed Zelaya.

"I just cannot stay here with my arms crossed," Chávez declared in one of many speeches calling for the new Honduran government to step aside.

Luis Vicente León, a pollster and political analyst in Caracas, said the crisis is "perfect" for Chávez "because he's not defending a tyrant; he's defending an elected president who was overthrown. It's showtime for the showman."

The extent of Chávez's influence on the Honduran crisis is unclear, many analysts said. But with Venezuelan state media publicizing his every pronouncement, some analysts say he is using the crisis to shift his countrymen's attention from domestic problems he has struggled with at a time when his popularity has been slipping.

Indeed, Zelaya, 56, is on the surface an unlikely benefactor of Venezuela's support. He is a rancher and logger from Honduras's upper classes who came late to Chávez's alliance of left-leaning nations, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, which includes Nicaragua, Bolivia, Cuba and others.

But Chávez has characterized Zelaya as a leftist fighting for the poor and said those who overthrew him hail from an oligarchy intent on maintaining the status quo. Chávez has even taken to mockingly calling Roberto Micheletti, the lawmaker who replaced Zelaya as president, a "gorilla."

"I swear as president: We are going to make your life impossible," Chávez said in one speech, directing his ire at Micheletti.

Chávez has also said that the CIA could have had a hand in Zelaya's ouster. On Monday, Chávez gave a long speech to fellow Latin American leaders, recounting U.S. interference in the region and his survival of a brief coup in 2002. The speech was televised by government stations here and CNN's Spanish-language service.

Milos Alcalay, who was Venezuela's ambassador to the United Nations until breaking with Chávez in 2004, said the Venezuelan president has quickly taken advantage of the crisis to cast himself as the leader of progressive countries battling the dark forces of Latin America's establishment. Alcalay said that, for Chávez, there is no middle ground or nuance in his approach to the Honduran crisis -- nor recognition that Zelaya had erred by pushing a nonbinding constitutional referendum opposed by the courts and his own party.

"He is, in essence, defending his ideological project, and the rest of the countries follow along," Alcalay said, referring mainly to Venezuela's closest allies. "He is following the vision of leadership set by Simón Bolívar, a mantle that he believes he now carries. It's megalomania on the international stage."

With the United States, Europe and big regional players such as Brazil and Mexico condemning the coup, Chávez's role in propelling Zelaya's possible comeback may be peripheral, some political analysts said. Indeed, Carlos Sosa, Zelaya's ambassador at the Organization of American States, said the demands made on Micheletti by other Latin American leaders have been vital.

"Hugo Chávez's role is like that of other leaders," such as Mexico's Felipe Calderón, Chile's Michelle Bachelet, Argentina's Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Obama, Sosa said in a telephone interview.

Mark Schneider of the International Crisis Group, a Washington-based policy organization that studies countries in crisis, said: "Chávez is clearly taking advantage of the opportunity, but he is not calling the shots."

Going by the Venezuelan state media, though, it would be hard to conclude that Chávez is not spearheading the effort. Nor is there any mention of the contradiction of Chávez demanding that the Hondurans adhere to democratic principles when his closest ally is communist Cuba. Although he labels Micheletti's government a military dictatorship, and decries the violence against protesters, state television makes no mention of a botched coup led by Chávez in 1992 in which dozens died.

León, the pollster, said the coverage is part of a larger strategy that helps the government deflect attention from grinding domestic problems it has been unable to address, including rampant crime and a troubled economy.

León said Chávez has been searching for a lift. The polling company León helps run, Datanalisis, said that more than 60 percent of Venezuelans supported Chávez in February, when he won a referendum on a constitutional amendment that permits him to run for reelection indefinitely.

But the popularity rating has slipped to slightly more than 50 percent in recent weeks, León said, as Venezuelans have become increasingly worried by what he called Chávez's "radicalization." Polls show that 75 percent oppose the government's expropriations targeting landholders and big companies. An additional 65 percent oppose the president's efforts to wrest power from local governments led by political opponents, León said.

"He is talking for the benefit of the local population because it allows him to put people's minds, for at least a while, on other issues and not their own problems," León said.

Still, Leon and other analysts said Chávez is often most formidable -- and effective -- on the international stage.

Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a policy group in Washington, said Chávez's attempts at leading his allies in an effort to reinstate a deposed friend dovetail effectively with his frequent invocation of images of coups against leftist leaders.

"He puts his money where his mouth is, and there's a grudging respect for that," Birns said.