U.S. Condemns Coup in Honduras but Makes No Firm Demands

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

President Obama said yesterday that the military ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was illegal and could set a "terrible precedent," but Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States government was holding off on formally branding it a coup, which would trigger a cutoff of millions of dollars in aid to the impoverished Central American country.

Clinton's statement appeared to reflect the U.S. government's caution amid fast-moving events in Honduras, where Zelaya was detained and expelled by the military on Sunday. The United States has joined other countries throughout the hemisphere in condemning the coup. But leaders face a difficult task in trying to restore Zelaya to office in a nation where the National Congress, military and Supreme Court have accused him of attempting a power grab through a special referendum.

Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, said the situation presented a dilemma for the United States and other countries. Zelaya is "fighting with all the institutions in the country," Hakim said. "He's in no condition really to govern. At the same time, to stand by and allow him to be pushed out by the military reverses a course of 20 years."

U.S. officials had tried ahead of time to avert the coup, warning the Honduran military and politicians against suspending democratic order. The U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, sheltered one of Zelaya's children to prevent him from being harmed, according to Carlos Sosa, Honduras's ambassador to the Organization of American States.

But the Obama administration has had cool relations with Zelaya, a close ally of Venezuela's anti-American president, Hugo Chávez. While U.S. officials say they continue to recognize Zelaya as president, they have not indicated they are willing to use the enormous U.S. clout in the country to force his return.

Asked whether it was a U.S. priority to see Zelaya reinstalled, Clinton said: "We haven't laid out any demands that we're insisting on, because we're working with others on behalf of our ultimate objectives."

John D. Negroponte, a former senior State Department official and ambassador to Honduras, said Clinton's remarks appeared to reflect U.S. reluctance to see Zelaya returned unconditionally to power.

"I think she wants to preserve some leverage to try and get Zelaya to back down from his insistence on a referendum," he said.

Zelaya clashed with the Honduran Congress, Supreme Court and military in recent weeks, particularly over his promotion of a referendum that might have permitted him to run for another four-year term. The Congress and Supreme Court said the referendum was illegal.

The Congress overwhelmingly voted to depose Zelaya after he had been forcibly removed. Lawmakers then named a new president, Roberto Micheletti, from the same party.

Obama repeated yesterday that the United States viewed Zelaya as Honduras's president and that "the coup was not legal."

"It would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition, rather than democratic elections," he told reporters after a meeting with Colombian President Álvaro Uribe.

Clinton told reporters that the situation in Honduras had "evolved into a coup" but that the United States was "withholding any formal legal determination" characterizing it that way.

"We're assessing what the final outcome of these actions will be," she said. "Much of our assistance is conditioned on the integrity of the democratic system. But if we were able to get to a status quo that returned to the rule of law and constitutional order within a relatively short period of time, I think that would be a good outcome."

The Obama administration has pledged to work more closely with Latin America and not dictate policy in its traditional back yard. But the United States has several points of leverage: It is Honduras's biggest trading partner, and President Obama has requested $68 million in development and military aid for 2010. Portions of that aid, which are provided directly to the government, would be cut off in the event of a coup. Congressional officials said last night they were not sure exactly how much that amounted to. Honduras also is a recipient of a five-year, $215 million Millennium Challenge grant that is conditioned on the country remaining a democracy.

The United States also has a close military relationship with Honduras. Hundreds of Honduran officers participate in U.S. military training programs each year, more than most other Western Hemisphere countries.

Among those who have attended such training is the senior military officer of Honduras, Gen. Romeo Vasquez, who was dismissed by Zelaya prior to the coup. After that dismissal, other senior Honduran military leaders resigned, including the Air Force commander, Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo.

Vasquez attended the Pentagon-run School of the Americas in 1976 and 1984, and Suazo attended in 1996, according to Army records of graduates obtained by a watchdog group. A spokesman for the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, which replaced the School of the Americas in 2001, said the records of graduates obtained by the group, School of Americas Watch, are accurate.

"We have a strong military relationship with them and in . . . military exchange training that takes place, we emphasize civilian control of the military" as well as human rights and the rule of law, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.

A contingent of about 600 U.S. military personnel is based at Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras as part of Joint Task Force Bravo, which mainly supports disaster relief, humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping and counternarcotics activities in Honduras and the region.

The Organization of American States has summoned the hemisphere's foreign ministers to Washington to discuss the crisis. Clinton said the United States is pushing for a delegation to be sent to Honduras after the session.

The United States has been a strong backer of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, a document signed by OAS members in 2001 that commits them to observe the "right to democracy." Violators can be suspended from the organization.

OAS members issued a statement calling for "the immediate, safe and unconditional return" of Zelaya to the presidency.

Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson contributed to this report.

New Honduran Leadership Flouts Worldwide Censure

By William Booth and Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, June 29 -- Honduras's new government vowed Monday to remain in power despite growing worldwide condemnation of the military-led coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

As leaders from across Latin America met in Nicaragua to demand that Zelaya be returned to office, hundreds of protesters in the Honduran capital were met with tear gas fired by soldiers surrounding the presidential palace. The new government ordered the streets cleared, and shopkeepers barricaded their doors. Residents rushed home as a 9 p.m. curfew was enforced.

Although the United States and its allies condemned the coup, the most vocal opposition -- along with threats of military intervention -- came from Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who led a summit of leftist allies in Nicaragua that demanded Zelaya be reinstated. The Venezuelan populist, who led a failed coup in his own country in 1992 and survived one in 2002, said the Honduran people should rebel against the new government.

"We are saying to the coup organizers, we are ready to support a rebellion of the people of Honduras," Chávez said. "This coup will be defeated."

Chávez spent Monday in the meeting in Managua, attended by the leaders of Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and other countries allied with Honduras. "We have to be very firm, very firm. This cannot end until José Manuel Zelaya is returned to power, without condition," he said.

Three of Honduras's neighbors -- Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua -- said Monday that they would suspend overland trade with Honduras for 48 hours. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, reading a statement, said the suspension was a "first step" against the new government.

Chávez also said his country is cutting off oil shipments to Honduras, which has received Venezuelan petroleum under beneficial terms.

Earlier, Chávez had pledged to "overthrow" Roberto Micheletti, a Honduran congressional leader and member of Zelaya's party who was sworn in as president Sunday afternoon.

On Monday, Micheletti responded to Chávez's threat on Honduran radio, saying, "Nobody scares us."

Chávez's growing belligerence marks a clear challenge to the Obama administration to reverse the coup or suffer a loss of clout in the region.

Senior Obama officials said an overthrow of the Zelaya government had been brewing for days -- and they worked behind the scenes to stop the military and its conservative, wealthy backers from pushing Zelaya out. That the United States failed to stop the coup gives antagonists such as Chávez room to use events to push their vision for the region.

At dawn on Sunday, heavily armed troops burst into the presidential palace here, broke through the door of Zelaya's bedroom and roused him from bed. He told reporters guns were pointed at him and he was escorted from his official residence in pajamas. Later he was put on a Honduran military plane and flown into exile in Costa Rica.

Honduran leaders who supported his removal say Zelaya had overstepped his presidential powers by calling for a nonbinding referendum on how long a president can serve here. His critics say Zelaya was intent on using his populist rhetoric to maintain power after his term officially was to end in January.

Honduran military helicopters circled the capital all afternoon, as Micheletti met with his supporters and began to make appointments for a new cabinet, a signal that organizers of the military-led ouster of Zelaya were planning to hold firm.

"I am sure that 80 to 90 percent of the Honduran population is happy with what happened," Micheletti said, adding he had not spoken to any other Latin American head of state.

The coup appears to have been well organized. Sunday morning, as Zelaya was being ousted, local TV and radio stations went off the air. Cellphone and land-line communications remain jammed, and many numbers offered only a busy signal.

Zelaya, speaking to reporters in Managua, demanded that he be restored to power but said that violence was not an option.

He also said that many Hondurans had no idea about the worldwide condemnation of the coup because private television stations in his country blacked out coverage, playing cartoons and soap operas.

By early Monday night, another meeting of Latin American nations had begun in Managua, with such heavyweights as Mexico and the secretary general of the Organization of American States, José Miguel Insulza, criticizing Zelaya's opponents.

Across the Americas and Europe, leaders called for Zelaya's reinstatement. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, said his government would not recognize a Honduran administration not headed by Zelaya. "We in Latin America can no longer accept someone trying to resolve his problem through the means of a coup," Lula said.

The United Nations condemned the coup and said Micheletti should make way for Zelaya's return. Zelaya was invited to address the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday. Zelaya also said he planned to return to Honduras and reclaim the presidency.

The ouster in the poor, agricultural country of 7 million people revived memories of coup-driven turmoil in Latin America. Zelaya, who has spoken frequently with reporters, has been quick to mention the political chaos that military overthrows have traditionally caused.

"Are we going to go back to the military being outside of the control of the civil state?" Zelaya said. "Everything that is supposed to be an achievement of the 21st century is at risk in Honduras."

Forero reported from Caracas, Venezuela.

Honduran Military Sends President Into Exile; Supportive Congress Names Successor

By William Booth and Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 29, 2009

MEXICO CITY, June 28 -- Soldiers stormed the presidential palace in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa at dawn Sunday and forced President Manuel Zelaya into exile in Costa Rica. The military-led ouster sparked a regional crisis that thrusts the impoverished banana-growing country onto the international stage and revives painful memories of coup-fueled turmoil in Latin America.

The coup was condemned throughout the Americas. President Obama joined other regional leaders in calling for a peaceful return of Zelaya to office.

But the Honduran National Congress defiantly announced that Zelaya was out, and its members named congressional leader Roberto Micheletti the new president on Sunday afternoon.

The Honduran Supreme Court also supported the removal of Zelaya, saying that the military was acting in defense of democracy.

Zelaya, a leftist ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, told reporters that he was woken by shouts and gunshots early Sunday. While still in his pajamas, the Honduran president said, soldiers took him to a waiting air force plane that flew him to Costa Rica. The coup was mostly peaceful, though tanks and soldiers occupied streets in Tegucigalpa.

Senior administration officials in Washington said Sunday that U.S. diplomats had been negotiating behind the scenes to stop the coup. "We have worked hard to avoid this," a senior Obama official said in a background briefing with reporters. "This has been brewing a long time."

U.S. officials said the Honduran military, which has traditionally maintained close ties with the United States, had broken off contact with U.S. diplomats after the coup. Obama is due to meet Álvaro Uribe, president of regional power Colombia, at the White House on Monday, and Honduras is now likely to be high on the agenda.

Military coups in Latin America have become rare, but Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said Sunday's events in Honduras reminded her of "the worst years in Latin America's history," when coups were common and often led to cycles of violence. The coup draws the Obama administration into its first real diplomatic test in the hemisphere, in a country where people have complex feelings toward the United States. The Reagan administration's contra war against the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua was fought from Honduras, one of the poorest countries in Latin America, whose fragile economy is supported by remittances from Hondurans living in the United States.

Zelaya was removed from office as Hondurans prepared to vote Sunday in a nonbinding referendum asking them whether they would support a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution. Zelaya's critics said he wanted to use the referendum to open the door to reelection after his term ends in January 2010, an assertion that he denied.

The referendum -- which U.S. officials described as more of a "survey" than a true vote -- was condemned by broad swaths of Honduran society as an obvious power grab. The Honduran Supreme Court called the referendum unconstitutional, and leaders of Zelaya's own party denounced the measure.

The scene in Tegucigalpa on Sunday was chaotic, and it was unclear what would happen next. As Zelaya condemned his forced ouster at a news conference in Costa Rica, the Honduran Congress voted to accept what it claimed was Zelaya's resignation letter.

Zelaya denied that he had signed such a letter. A senior U.S. official said, "It is hard to take that letter seriously given how President Zelaya was removed from office."

Zelaya said he was still the legal leader. He said he would attend a meeting of regional leaders Monday in Nicaragua to seek a return to office. But in taking the oath of office as president, Micheletti characterized Zelaya's removal as a patriotic measure designed to restore democracy.

"I did not get here through the ignominy of a coup d'etat," Micheletti told lawmakers after taking the oath of office. "I give thanks to God for this beautiful opportunity."

In Venezuela, Chávez, speaking on national television, called the overthrow the work of "the bourgeoisie and the extreme right." He said Venezuela would "guarantee" that its close ally Zelaya would be returned to power.

"This is a coup against all of us," Chávez said. "We have to do everything to stop it."

Late Sunday, Chávez put his troops on alert and said he would respond militarily if his envoy to Honduras was harmed. Chávez said Honduran soldiers took away the Cuban ambassador and left the Venezuelan ambassador on the side of a road after beating him during the army's coup. A senior U.S. official sought to play down the potential for military action by outsiders, saying, "We don't believe Venezuela is planning on sending any troops."

The United States maintains troops at the Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras to assist the Honduran military and police with anti-drug interdiction and other missions.

"This gives Chávez the high moral ground to go on with his narrative about right-wing oligarchs who don't tolerate leftist governments," said Michael Shifter, an analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. "There's nobody better at seizing these moments than Chávez."

In Washington, Obama said he was "deeply concerned by reports coming out of Honduras regarding the detention and expulsion of President Mel Zelaya."

A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the United States would work alongside the Organization of American States to restore Zelaya, and the official predicted that the organizers of the coup would find themselves isolated and facing stiff pressure to allow Zelaya's return.

But a senior Honduran official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he did not foresee the new government backing down. He said the country's Congress had appointed a commission Thursday evening to investigate whether the president's referendum was in line with the constitution. The commission reported back Sunday afternoon that the president had violated the constitution, and the Congress voted to remove him. That procedure is "within the constitution," said the senior official -- although the coup that occurred hours earlier was not, he acknowledged.

"The decision was adopted by unanimity in the Congress. That means all of the political parties. It has been endorsed by sectors that represent a wide array of Hondurans -- the Episcopal Church, the Catholic Church. And well, of course, the armed forces," he said.

"The difficult part will be for the international community to see things as the Honduran people see them," the official said.

Across Latin America, governments used strong language to condemn the overthrow and demand that Zelaya be returned to office. Those governments included Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador -- all close allies of Honduras in a leftist alliance of nations led by Chávez. Countries such as Costa Rica, which has close ties to the United States, also condemned the coup. Costa Rica's president, Oscar Arias, spoke alongside Zelaya at a news conference in San Jose, the capital.

"This is a lamentable step back, not just for Honduran democracy but for Central American democracy and throughout the hemisphere," Arias said.

In an interview with Spain's El País newspaper before his ouster, Zelaya said a planned attempt to remove him from power had been blocked by the United States.

"Everything was in place for the coup, and if the U.S. Embassy had approved it, it would have happened. But they did not. I'm only still here in office thanks to the United States," he said in the interview, which was published Sunday.

A senior administration official would not confirm that account, but said, "We were very clear . . . that any resolution of the political conflict in Honduras had to be democratic and constitutional."

Forero reported from Caracas, Venezuela. Staff writer Mary Beth Sheridan in Washington contributed to this report.

China, Cuba, Other Authoritarian Regimes Censor News From Iran

By Ariana Eunjung Cha

Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 27, 2009

BEIJING -- Out of fear that history might repeat itself, the authoritarian governments of China, Cuba and Burma have been selectively censoring the news this month of Iranian crowds braving government militias on the streets of Tehran to demand democratic reforms.

Between 1988 and 1990, amid a lesser global economic slump, pro-democracy protests that appeared to inspire and energize one another broke out in Eastern Europe, Burma, China and elsewhere. Not all evolved into full-fledged revolutions, but communist regimes fell in a broad swath of countries, and the global balance of power shifted.

A similar infectiousness has shown up in subtle acts of defiance by democracy advocates around the world this week.

In China, political commentators tinted their blogs and Twitters green to show their support for Iranians disputing President Ahmoud Ahmadinejad's reelection. The deaths of at least 20 people in violent clashes in Tehran have drawn comparisons online to "June 4," the date of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing in 1989. And a pointed joke about how Iranians are luckier than Chinese because sham elections are better than no elections made the rounds on the country's vast network of Internet bulletin boards.

"The Iranian people face the same problems as us: news censorship and no freedom to have their own voices," 28-year-old blogger Zhou Shuguang said in a telephone interview from the inland province of Hunan. Zhou said he and several friends were among those who had colored their online pictures green, the signature color of the Iranian opposition.

In Cuba, President Raúl Castro's government has imposed a complete blackout of news surrounding the Iranian elections. But word of developments is trickling through, anyway.

Havana-based blogger Yoani Sánchez, 33, who e-mails friends outside Cuba to get her entries posted online, said the Iranian protests -- in particular, the reportedly widespread use of Twitter, Facebook and cellphones -- have served as "a lesson for Cuban bloggers."

"Seeing those young Iranians use all the technology to denounce the injustice, I notice everything that we lack to support those who maintain blogs from the island," Sánchez wrote. "The acid test of our incipient virtual community has not yet arrived, but maybe it will surprise us tomorrow."

"Today it's you," she told the Iranian protesters in one posting. "Tomorrow it could well be us."

In Burma, the junta's mouthpiece, the New Light of Myanmar, has drowned out news from Tehran with articles on bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan. But some of the nearly 200 journals published privately in Rangoon and Mandalay have seized on the topic as a way to pass subversive messages to readers.

"What we, the private media, are trying to do was to put in as much stories and pixs of what's going on in Teheran in our papers. So far we were successful," the editor of a Rangoon-based weekly publication said in an e-mail. "The upcoming paper of mine . . . will carry, albeit if it's not censored, news stories of the events in Teheran and a feature on 'Elections and Democracy,' trying to draw some parallels between the one in Iran and the upcoming one here," a reference to elections, scheduled for 2010, that many critics dismiss as a sham.

Unlike in Iran, however, the experience of past failed protests has yielded a measure of pragmatism in Burma. Overtly political opposition groups, such as Generation Wave, and numerous apolitical networks have in recent months focused on a more evolutionary strategy of change, reaching out in particular to Burma's rural masses.

"We cannot go directly to our goal," said a graphic designer who co-founded a group that teaches social management and governance in Rangoon and remote towns under the cover of English classes.

Moe Thway, founder of Generation Wave, said Iran's citizens do not appear to be as depressed or despairing as Burma's. Even the most hard-bitten Burmese activists see little hope in taking to the streets for now.

"About Iran, I can't say whether their current movement will change the political trend or not," he said. "Iran and our Burma are still different."

In Venezuela, a South American country that is increasingly polarized, protests against President Hugo Chávez's administration are common. Juan Mejía, 22, said he found the protests in Iran stirring, partly because he felt that opponents of the government in Tehran want the same thing as protesters in Caracas.

"The fact that people have gone out onto the street, that they demand their rights be respected, means to us that they felt there was no liberty and that they want a different country," said Mejía, a student leader who opposes Chávez. "We believe that if the people of the world raise their voices loudly enough -- in Iran, as we do it here in Venezuela, and hopefully one day in Cuba -- then surely we will have a better world."

Venezuela, as opposed to countries such as Cuba and China, holds frequent elections, and dissent remains a part of the political discourse. But in a decade in power, Chávez has taken control of the Congress, the courts and the state oil company, and his opponents charge that he is a dictator in the making.

In China, the Communist Party's propaganda machine has worked furiously to portray the protests in Iran -- already being dubbed the Green Revolution, after the Rose and Orange revolutions earlier this decade in Georgia and Ukraine -- as orchestrated by the United States and other Western powers, not a grass-roots movement. Unlike Western leaders, who have avoided acknowledging Ahmadinejad's claims of victory, President Hu Jintao joined Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev in meeting with and congratulating the Iranian president.

On online discussion boards this week, tens of thousands of comments about Iran were shown as deleted; most of those allowed to remain took the official party line on the elections.

China's main message has been that this vulnerable period, with the world hit by the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, is no time for a "color revolution."

"Attempts to push the so-called color revolution toward chaos will prove very dangerous," the state-run China Daily said in a recent editorial.

The Chinese government has been especially aggressive this year in cracking down on talk of democracy because 2009 is full of politically sensitive anniversaries. In the most recent move, officials announced Tuesday the formal arrest of Liu Xiaobo, an influential dissident who had helped draft and sign a pro-democracy petition known as Charter 08.

Albert Ho, chairman of the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group in Hong Kong, said he sees many parallels between the situation in Iran and the atmosphere in China, citing many "hot spots" on the mainland that could explode into violent protests at any time.

"This time, the dark dictatorship has won, but I don't feel hopeless," Ho said of Iran. "On the contrary, I see more clearly that there is hope. I used to think, in such a totalitarian country, people had no hope for democracy. But I can see not only students but people from all different classes, even very low-class men and women, all have such a strong will for democracy, and they fight together for taking down the cheated election."

In contrast, Li Datong, a Beijing-based pro-democracy writer who was fired from his job in China's state media after publishing a piece on censorship on the Internet, said democratic change will come more gradually and peacefully in China.

"Young people might be excited about what happened in Iran now, but not me -- a 57-year-old one who has witnessed dramatic change in China. I think the cultivation of democratic elements within a society is more important and practical," Li said, mentioning the increased acceptance of public accountability and the growth of civil society groups in recent years.

Some democracy advocates in China said that even if the Iranian protesters fail in their calls for legitimate elections this time, their fight will inspire others, as similar uprisings -- in Burma in 1988 and at Tiananmen Square the next year, for example -- have done in the past.

The iconic image of the Iranian protests may be the chilling video, filmed on a cellphone camera, of Neda Agha Soltan, the 26-year-old woman who died on the streets of Tehran minutes after being struck by a bullet.

"Democracy won't come by the charity of the governing class," someone from the city of Suzhou, in the eastern province of Jiangsu, wrote about Agha Soltan on an online message board. "Fighting is the only way to gain democracy. . . . People are doomed to be slaves unless they are willing to sacrifice their blood."

Correspondent Juan Forero in Caracas, special correspondent Karla Adam in London, a staff writer in Washington and researchers Zhang Jie, Wang Juan and Liu Liu in Beijing contributed to this report.