Singer, David Carroll, Uses Video to Complain About United Airlines - NYTimes.com

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By CHRISTINE NEGRONI

United Airlines learned its lesson the hard way that David Carroll was not just another customer.

After baggage handlers at United broke his guitar last summer and the airline refused to pay for the $1,200 repair, Mr. Carroll, a Canadian singer, created a music video titled “United Breaks Guitars” that has been viewed more than 5.8 million times. United executives met with him and promised to do better.

So how was Mr. Carroll’s most recent flight on United?

This Everyman symbol of the aggrieved traveler was treated, well, like just another customer. United lost his bag.

In an interview, Mr. Carroll said that for more than an hour on Sunday, he was told he could not leave the international baggage claim area at Denver International Airport, where he had flown from Saskatchewan. He said he had been told to stay because his bag was delayed, not lost, and he had to be there to claim it when it came down the conveyor belt.

“I’m the only person pacing around this room,” Mr. Carroll said, recalling how he was caught between an order from United staff members to stay and collect his bag, and a federal customs official telling him he had to leave the baggage claim area. The bag never showed.

A United Airlines spokeswoman, Robin Urbanski, said, “We will fully investigate what regretfully happened.”

Mr. Carroll’s life has taken more surprising routes than his luggage. He enjoyed modest popularity as a singer-songwriter in Canada until his video, which has made him a sought-after speaker on customer service.

His father-in-law, Brent Sansom, has become his business adviser to help him sort requests.

This latest episode provided him with fresh material for his most recent performance, which was why he was flying on United — to speak to a group of customer service executives on Tuesday (though without his best shoes and “United Breaks Guitars” CDs that were in his still missing suitcase).

When Mr. Carroll asked members of the audience if they ever had a similar problem, he saw a sea of hands.

“It crosses all income levels and languages and geographies,” he said. “We all don’t like feeling disrespected or insignificant.”

Greg Gianforte, the founder and chief executive of RightNow, a customer service software company, and the person who organized the meeting, said he was sorry to hear what happened to Mr. Carroll, even if it made for a livelier meeting.

“We were thrilled to have Dave come here,” Mr. Gianforte said. “But since United was the only carrier he could take from Canada to Colorado Springs, in a certain sense, we’re responsible.”

Mr. Carroll was reunited with his bag on Wednesday morning.

Lawmakers Stage Rare Protest During Clinton's Russia Visit - washingtonpost.com

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Citing Election Fraud, Minority Parties Walk Out on Last Day of Clinton's Visit

By Philip P. Pan and Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 15, 2009

MOSCOW, Oct. 14 -- The minority political parties in Russia's parliament walked out of the chamber in a rare act of protest Wednesday, embarrassing the Kremlin during a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and demanding a recount of votes in local elections widely perceived to have been rigged.

The protest was unusual because the parties generally cooperate with the Kremlin in what the pro-democracy opposition says is a stage-managed legislature. It was the first time in nine years that all lawmakers outside the dominant United Russia party have engineered a walkout, suggesting growing political strains caused by the economic crisis and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's authoritarian policies.

Putin's United Russia, which holds 315 of the 450 seats in the Duma, the lower house of parliament, swept local elections Sunday, winning up to 80 percent of the 7,000-plus races and all but three seats on the 35-member city council in Moscow. Independent observers and opposition parties reported mass electoral violations, including clashes between voters and police in one province.

"This is outright fascism," Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, said Wednesday after leading his faction out of parliament. He was followed by the Communist Party, which accused Putin of bringing the political system to a new low, and Fair Russia, a left-wing party formed with Kremlin support three years ago.

Ilya Ponomaryov, a Fair Russia lawmaker, said his party was protesting not only election fraud, which has become routine in Russia, but also an attempt by the authorities to forbid debate on the subject in the Duma. "It was done in such an arrogant way that we felt it was useless to stay," he said. "They denied us the right to even speak. That's the minimum in a parliament. Otherwise, what's the point?"

But Ponomaryov said the parties would return to parliament by the end of the week after receiving assurances that President Dmitry Medvedev would meet with them and support a proposal that would forbid the ruling party from silencing them in the future.

There was no immediate comment from Medvedev, who has called for greater political competition in Russia and had praised the elections as "well organized." But speaking to reporters in Beijing, Putin dismissed the fraud allegations. "Those who don't win are never happy," he said.

The protest came on the last day of a visit that Clinton has used to speak relatively forcefully about the shortcomings of the Russian political system, even as she has tried to strengthen relations with the Kremlin and persuade it to support sanctions against Iran if necessary.

Clinton met with human rights activists at a reception at the U.S. ambassador's residence Tuesday. "A society cannot be truly open when those who stand up and speak out are murdered," she told them. She added, "Those of you here today not only understand the risks, you live them."

She continued pressing the issue during an interview on the Echo of Moscow radio station Wednesday, saying that she met an activist at the reception who had been badly beaten and calling such attacks "a matter of grave concern" to the United States.

"All of these issues of imprisonments, detentions, beatings, killings -- it is something that is hurtful to see from the outside," she said. "Every country has criminal elements. Every country has people who try to abuse power. But in the last 18 months -- well, and even going back further -- there have been too many of these incidents."

She added: "I think people want their government to stand up and say this is wrong, and they're going to try to prevent it, and they're going to make sure the people are brought to justice who are engaged in such behavior."

Later, addressing 1,000 students at Moscow State University, Clinton criticized officials in Washington and Moscow who are skeptical of a closer U.S. relationship with Russia.

"I will be the first to tell you, we have people in our government, and you have people in your government, who are still living in the past. They do not believe us and Russia can cooperate to this extent. They do not trust each other," she said. "And we have to prove them wrong."

Clinton did not identify the officials. But the statement recalled a remark by President Obama this year describing Putin as having "one foot" in the "old Cold War approaches to U.S.-Russian relations." Later, after meeting Putin in Moscow, Obama said he was convinced that Putin was interested in moving forward.

Despite the correction, the Obama administration has often highlighted its relationship with Medvedev, the protege Putin selected to succeed him as president. Medvedev has seemed more open to sanctions against Iran and has presented himself as more interested in liberal political reforms than Putin, who remains the most powerful politician in Russia.

Clinton said nothing about the Duma protest before leaving Russia, but State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley expressed concern about the voting fraud allegations and said fair elections are key to fighting corruption. "And, of course," he added, "that's the vision that's been articulated by President Medvedev."

Struggling for the Rule of Law: The Pakistani Lawyers’ Movement

Daud Munir

(Daud Munir is a doctoral candidate in politics at Princeton University.)

Lawyers protest against the establishment of anti-terrorist courts headed by civil-military judges, February 2, 2002, Lahore. (K. M. Chaudary/AP Photo)

In March 2007, when President (and General) Pervez Musharraf suspended Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, Pakistani lawyers took to the streets in large numbers. It was a dangerous street where they were met with batons, barbed wire, tear gas, bullets and bombs. If their immediate demand was Chaudhry’s return to the bench, the incipient goal of their movement was restoration and respect for the rule of law. Over the last two years, protesting lawyers fundamentally transformed the political landscape in Pakistan.

Lawyers—at least in their capacity as lawyers—rarely enter the fray of contentious politics by employing disruptive techniques to press for changes in government policy. While lawyers are agents and advocates of political liberalism and the rule of law in most countries, their favored arena of contestation usually has been courts, and their preferred tactics of resistance have been writs and petitions. If we define a “lawyers’ movement” as a coherent nationwide struggle by legal professionals, sustained over time and fought primarily in the streets, Pakistan would emerge as the only case.

The lawyers’ bold challenge to Musharraf presented a unique historical opportunity for meaningful political reform in Pakistan. It certainly presented a counter-image of the idea that Pakistan is a “failed state,” as some US policymakers have claimed, and a contrast to the parallel undemocratic impulse in Pakistan’s politics, led by militant movements of tribal Pashtuns seeking to install a radical version of Islam in the country’s northwest regions. The broader effects of the lawyers’ struggle depend on whether this indigenous democratic impulse can flourish and endure in the post-Musharraf era. The problem is that while western policymakers are ready to extend billions of dollars in military aid to subdue the extremist impulse, they seem unwilling to engage with—or even to adequately acknowledge—the secular, reformist impulse in Pakistani society that is represented by the lawyers’ movement.

A Tale of Two Judges

Following Pakistan’s creation as an independent state in 1947, the project of establishing constitutional governance had an unpromising beginning. In 1954, the Constituent Assembly finally agreed on the governing legal framework. Later that year, as legal experts were busy drafting the text of the constitution, Governor-General Ghulam Muhammad dissolved the Assembly, silencing what he referred to as its “parliamentary bickering.” Proclaiming in an emergency proclamation that the Assembly had “lost the confidence of the people,” what really troubled Muhammad was the imminent curtailment of his powers through new legislation.

The executive enlisted the support of the military in its bid to preserve its power. In a breach of rules barring members of the military from holding political office, General Ayub Khan, the army chief, was appointed as a minister in the newly formed cabinet. This extra-constitutional action formally paved the way for the military’s entry into Pakistan’s politics.

How did the judiciary respond? The Chief Court of Sindh accepted a petition submitted by the president of the Assembly and invalidated the actions of the governor-general. On appeal, however, the Federal Court upheld the legality of the Assembly’s dissolution. A constitutional crisis ensued, which the court resolved by relying on the “doctrine of necessity.” According to this controversial principle, extra-constitutional actions can be legally justified under special circumstances. The man behind this legal maneuver was Chief Justice Muhammad Munir, a brilliant legal mind. His majority opinion which, in essence, validated Pakistan’s first extra-constitutional coup, was a skillful attempt at bending the law in support of the executive. Munir’s ruling endorsing the usurpation of power would prove costly for Pakistan.

In 1958, when General Khan suspended the constitution and imposed the first martial law, Justice Munir authored the leading judgment validating this military coup d’état. This time the legal maneuver involved mislabeling the coup a “revolution” by invoking the speculative theory of “revolutionary legality” developed by the Austrian jurist Hans Kelsen. The court argued that since the “revolution” satisfied “the test of efficacy,” it could thereby be deemed legitimate. In other words, the success of the military coup d’état automatically furnished the justification for its legality.

The jurisprudence of the Munir court set the tone for constitutional reasoning in Pakistan. The doctrine of necessity, in particular, was used repeatedly to legitimate extralegal usurpations of power. Both Generals Zia ul-Haq’s and Pervez Musharraf’s military takeovers, in 1977 and 1999, respectively, were validated using this doctrine. One of the members of the bench who reviewed and endorsed the legality of Musharraf’s military coup d’état in May 2000 was Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.

When Chaudhry became chief justice in 2005, however, his judicial philosophy underwent a fundamental metamorphosis. Rather than acting as an agent of the power elite, Chaudhry sought to become a guarantor of the fundamental rights of Pakistani citizens. Soon after being sworn in, he established a “human rights cell” in the Supreme Court. Through this forum, Chaudhry started accepting petitions from the public against infringements of constitutionally guaranteed rights. The cases taken up by the court incrementally tightened the noose of legality around the Musharraf regime.

In the first few cases, the court held local town officials accountable for failing to oversee and enforce safety regulations in construction projects. Decisions in another set of cases annulled the leases of two public parks that were handed over to private parties for the development of a mini-golf course and a parking complex. Next in line were cases against corrupt federal ministers involved in illegally controlling the prices of commodities. By successively implicating more powerful state officials, it seemed that Chaudhry was testing the regime’s willingness to tolerate his judicial activism.

There was a paradigmatic shift in the core function of Pakistan’s Supreme Court when decisions started going against senior members of the executive. One of these decisions directly challenged the administrative practices of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who privatized Pakistan Steel Mills, one of the country’s largest public sector enterprises, generating considerable controversy. It was alleged that Aziz, who was also the chair of the Cabinet Committee on Privatization, had agreed to the sale of the corporation at an unduly low price to a consortium he favored. In a landmark judgment, the Chaudhry Court annulled the sale agreement on the grounds that the deal had been done in “indecent haste.”

Soon afterwards, the court shocked the military regime by taking up cases addressing “missing persons.” Under the pretext of the “war on terror,” Musharraf’s security apparatus had forcibly disappeared a large number of political opponents. In an astoundingly bold move, Chief Justice Chaudhry accepted a case involving 41 missing persons. The court upheld the right to due process for extrajudicially detained individuals and ordered the state agencies to produce them in court. This was an extraordinary contra-authoritarian step in the judicial history of Pakistan. Chaudhry’s activism generated immense respect among lawyers and the human rights community, and was widely reported in the burgeoning independent Pakistani media. Emboldened by the positive feedback, Chaudhry accepted another case involving over a hundred forced disappearances on March 8, 2007. The next day would prove fateful for both Chaudhry and the military regime in Pakistan.

Chaudhry’s Suspension

Lawyers of Lahore protest military rule, February 27, 2001, in Lahore. (K. M. Choudary/AP Photo)

Musharraf invited Chaudhry to his official residence. Dressed in military uniform and accompanied by the prime minster and intelligence chiefs, he sought to pressure the chief justice to resign. Chaudhry refused. An infuriated Musharraf forcibly detained Chaudhry for several hours and then suspended him through a presidential order with immediate effect. An acting chief justice was sworn in.

After Chaudhry’s suspension, bar associations in several parts of the country began protesting Musharraf’s action. Three days after the suspension, as the deposed chief justice left his residence to face the Supreme Court bench hearing his case, a police car was waiting to transport him. Chaudhry, however, believed that he was still the rightful chief justice of Pakistan—and certainly not a criminal—and so decided to walk to court rather than ride in the police car. At this point, the security forces pulled him by the hair and forced him into the car. Their actions were captured on film and widely circulated on news channels and reported in the print media.

The insult to one of the highest symbols of the legal profession galvanized even habitually apathetic lawyers. Wearing their black coats, lawyers took to the streets in protests across the country demanding Chaudhry’s reinstatement. Thus began the lawyers’ movement, which continued with a boycott of courts and ongoing demonstrations against the regime. Chaudhry traveled around the country, addressing bar associations in order to help keep the movement animated. The media played a critical role by giving live coverage to the events and by debating the legality of Musharraf’s action.

In July 2007, in the context of public opinion strongly mobilized in favor of the deposed chief justice, the Supreme Court passed a landmark judgment annulling the presidential order and restoring Chaudhry. This was the first judicial ruling in the country’s history directly challenging the action of a military dictator.

The Struggle Continued

The chief justice—restored to his post as a result of countrywide popular mobilization—felt emboldened to take up the case of Musharraf’s eligibility to run for reelection as president while in military uniform. Sensing an imminent court decision against the constitutionality of his bid for reelection, Musharraf imposed emergency rule in November 2007. He suspended sixty judges of the higher courts in Pakistan, including Chief Justice Chaudhry.

Over the next few months, Musharraf’s security apparatus launched an offensive against Pakistan’s civil society, with special vehemence directed at the rebellious legal community. Although many individuals were brutally attacked, the lawyers’ movement continued to press the government for the restoration of the judiciary. The boycott of courts and the climate of instability most likely contributed to a rift within the military over how best to respond and control the mobilization. It certainly was a factor in Musharraf’s decision to extend his hand to Benazir Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), to stave the erosion of his own legitimacy. Under an agreement with Musharraf that granted her blanket immunity for pending corruption charges, Bhutto returned to Pakistan in October 2007. In the buildup to a January 2008 parliamentary election, Bhutto, the leading opposition candidate, was assassinated at a rally in Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007.

After being sworn in as president for another five years, Musharraf maintained his refusal to restore the deposed judges. In July 2008, the lawyers’ movement organized the first “long march.” Around 50,000 protesters from around the country converged on the capital. Given the erosion of his power during the last year and mounting opposition to his policies, Musharraf resigned in August.

A few weeks later, Asif Zardari, Bhutto’s widower and co-chair of the PPP, was elected president. One of his campaign promises was to restore the deposed judges. However, several months into his presidency Zardari not only refused to reinstate the judges, but appointed PPP loyalists as judges in higher courts, presumably motivated in part by a desire to curtail corruption cases against him.

The lawyers’ movement had not abated with the end of Musharraf’s rule, and new pressure was directed at Zardari to reinstate the judiciary. The lawyers organized a second long march in March 2009, in which opposition parties officially joined. This time, before the hundreds of thousands of protestors reached the capital, the prime minister announced the restoration of the deposed judges. Chief Justice Chaudhry once again resumed office on March 22, 2009.

Undermining Authoritarianism

Even though “Go Musharraf Go!” had been one of the main slogans of the lawyers, it would be erroneous to think that the movement’s goal was regime change. In retrospect, the single-issue clarity of the movement’s campaign to reinstate the deposed judges arguably made their activism so successful. But the lawyers’ struggle did prove to be a critical factor in undermining Musharraf’s military regime and forcing his resignation. Unlike most other transitions to democracy in which the principal agents of change have been a country’s political elites, in Pakistan it was mobilization by the legal community that paved the way.

To understand how middle class professionals could upend a military regime as powerful as Musharraf’s, it is important to specify the nature of the Pakistan lawyers’ movement. For one thing, it was not confined to any particular geographical region; lawyers from across the country were actively involved, with Lahore and Karachi registering the highest turnouts at protests. The movement was not dominated by any single ethnic or sectarian group, thus giving it a truly national complexion. And it was not a façade for political party activism, although parties occasionally participated—especially at key events. This movement was initiated, organized and sustained by Pakistani legal professionals who waged their struggle mainly in the streets.

Lawyers put their safety and freedom at risk, given Pakistan’s history of political violence and regime repression. Thousands were arrested, illegally detained, beaten up and tear-gassed. There were at least two violent events during which more than 50 died. The Musharraf regime had used the draconian Anti-Terrorism Act to detain several lawyers, and amended the Army Act of 1952 to allow civilians to be tried in military courts for vague offenses such as “giving statements conducive to public mischief.”

The erosion of regime legitimacy is rarely sufficient to oust a dictator. What is needed—and what the Pakistani lawyers’ movement provided—was the infliction of tangible costs. By acting as a judicial support network, lawyers propelled the regime into constitutional crises. In many countries, authoritarian regime destabilization is the result of an economic crisis. In Pakistan, the crisis of governability arose first in the legal realm. The mobilization of public opinion in support of the deposed judges, arguably, was critical in the decision of the Supreme Court to annul the presidential order. After the judiciary was restored, the lawyers pressed them to take up the case of Musharraf’s eligibility to run for reelection, propelling the regime into a second crisis.

Lawyers’ boycotts of normal court proceedings threatened the workings of the entire judicial system. The public did not blame the lawyers, but rather the regime, for the consequences of the boycott. And since the lawyers mobilized in the streets rather than merely staying home, they baited the regime, which responded with violent repression. This exacted immense reputational costs both at home and internationally, given the extensive live coverage of protest events by the media. The regime’s destruction of media company offices and passage of censorship laws backfired, further inflaming anti-regime sentiment. The regime also used tactics such as arranging counter-demonstrations by fake lawyers and organizing a national rally in support of Musharraf. Such obvious desperation both exacerbated and illustrated the regime’s loss of power.

Finally, the event that most forcefully proved the cost inflicted by the lawyers’ movement was the regime’s imposition of emergency rule. This was a clear instance of the diversion of the regime’s energies to fighting civil society rather than focusing on important policy issues or confronting the growing threat of Islamist militancy in Pakistan.

A New Vocabulary of Politics

Beyond achieving the restoration of the judges to the bench and eroding the jurisprudential foundations of authoritarianism, the lawyers’ movement has had a deeper structural impact on democratic politics in Pakistan. Historically, party politics has relied on three kinds of allegiances to mobilize people: ethnic, religious and clientelistic. Even a relatively populist leader like Zulfiqar Bhutto, who claimed to champion the dispossessed, offered (clientelistic) “bread, cloth and shelter.” Until the lawyers’ movement, no one had offered “rule of law” to the people.

The political dynamic between Pakistan’s political parties and the lawyers’ movement presents a fascinating example of the potential of civil society in newly democratizing countries. Rather than engaging in partisan politics, the lawyers chose to engage in direct mobilization through the bar. This professional autonomy prevented the movement from being subsumed or manipulated by party politics. Conversely, the political parties tried hard to forge an association with the lawyers’ movement, given its success at mobilization and broad-based legitimacy.

The lawyers’ movement became the principal conduit for democratic change in the political arena. Parties that sought to gain leverage by aligning with the movement had to pay the price of structuring their platforms according to lawyers’ demands for rule of law. The case of the PPP is illustrative. It initially appropriated the movement to gain access to the political space in Pakistan by promising to restore the judges. But after Zardari failed to honor this PPP campaign promise, the strong public opinion mobilized by the lawyers’ movement began adversely affecting his party. Realizing this, Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League threw its force behind the movement, gaining considerable legitimacy as a result.

The lawyers’ movement had an impact not only on traditionally clientelistic parties, but also on Islamist parties that historically have mobilized supporters for the implementation of shari‘a law in Pakistan. The Jamaat-e-Islami was one of the parties most actively engaged with the lawyers’ movement, despite the latter’s aim of strengthening the secular legal system in the country. (For Jamaat, siding with the lawyers was a means of expressing opposition to Musharraf.) As political parties appropriated the movement, they were forced to employ a variant of universalistic liberal legal rhetoric that cut across ethnic, religious or clientelistic claims.

Building the Rule of Law

In Pakistan, interludes of democratic rule have brought only nominal improvements in the lives of citizens. As in other emerging democracies, hopes that courts would protect citizens’ fundamental rights are often derailed when the judiciary proves unable or unwilling to check the power of the regime or elites. Recent events in Pakistan, however, provide an interesting case of courts’ efforts to protect rights and build the rule of law at the expense of power elites.

Support for domestic legal reform from multilateral and foreign institutions such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and USAID typically envisions a formalistic legal environment and espouses a model divorced from—or at least not tailored to—the social and political forces in the target country. The international record of trying to transplant a one-size-fits-all model of legal reform is unimpressive, not least because it ignores the fact that law is inherently and fundamentally political. The most successful examples of rule of law-building are found in countries where local actors and institutions direct the reforms in ways that accommodate local norms of legal legitimacy.

The two-year struggle of the legal community for upholding the rule of law in Pakistan can be thought of as a political project aimed at legal reform. In contrast to legal reform programs of multilateral institutions, this project was not implemented in a top-down manner. Rather, it was an indigenous project, deeply embedded in the country’s social and political context. Rather than focusing on strengthening the judicial machinery, the lawyers’ movement engaged in rule of law-supporting activism through street protests and court boycotts. In the end, it accomplished something that formalistic legal development by multilateral institutions arguably cannot: the widespread legitimacy of judicial institutions among the citizens of Pakistan.

Given this strong impulse for reform in Pakistan, it seems odd that the country has often been labeled as the “most dangerous place in the world” in the western press. This characterization builds on an exclusive focus on radical movements in Pakistan’s northwest. Given its scope and breadth, however, the lawyers’ movement is arguably more representative of the political aspirations of Pakistanis than is Talibanization. An exclusive focus on the latter, however, by the international community may tilt the balance in the opposite direction.

Debate Over Afghanistan Rages in Britain as Casualties Rise

By Sonja Pace London 20 July 2009

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Another British soldier has been killed in Afghanistan, the 17th this month. Rising casualties have sparked a political debate about the country's involvement in Afghanistan and why more and more of its soldiers are dying.

British soldiers carry coffin of Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Thorneloe into The Guards Chapel in the Wellington Barracks in London for a funeral service, 16 Jul 2009

Britain has more than 9,000 troops in Afghanistan, about one third of them involved in Operations Panther's Claw against insurgents in Helmand province. And it is there that an increasing number of British troops have been dying, many killed by roadside bombs.

The rising toll has not gone unnoticed back home. In the small town of Wootton Bassett in southern England growing crowds gather ever more frequently to pay their final respects as the dead are repatriated and their flag-draped coffins driven through town.

Military analyst, Malcolm Chalmers of Britain's Royal United Services Institute, says until now the public has not really paid much attention to events in Afghanistan.

"The debate has become more intense and all those involved in the debate are looking at their answers and finding out that a lot of their explanations are not very convincing because the situation in Afghanistan is very difficult indeed and there are no quick solutions."

The debate has spilled over into parliament where Prime Minister Gordon Brown has faced pointed questions about his strategy, troop levels and whether troops are adequately equipped. Mr. Brown has been on the defensive.

"Mr. Speaker, we keep our force levels under constant review depending on the operational requirements," he said. "And, I have been reassured by commanders on the ground and the top of our armed services that we have the manpower we need for the current operations."

But there has been criticism from some top military brass. Army commander General Richard Dannatt has called for better equipment for troops to protect against roadside bombs.

Former soldier and now opposition member of parliament Adam Holloway, of the Conservative Party, says questions about troop levels and equipment are valid. But, he says the real problem is that the government's strategy is wrong for not focusing enough on helping average Afghans.

"We have only got one bit of the war going. We have got the big bang-bang war going. The battle for the people we are losing for sure," said Holloway.

Holloway says the only way to win on that second front is to provide security and economic development for Afghan towns and villages, not just send bombs and troops.

"You can bomb them back into the stone age, but you will never get rid of the Taliban that way," he added. "The only people who can defeat them are the Afghan people themselves and we need to be helping them to do that."

Holloway says more foreign troops are needed to establish security in troubled provinces like Helmand. But he says more emphasis must be placed on training the Afghan military and on development. He also says outside support for the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai is counter-productive, since that government is widely viewed as corrupt and ineffective.

But there are questions whether the rise in casualties will erode British public support for the mission.

Military analyst Malcolm Chalmers says it is possible.

"If there are not results in Helmand then people will be saying, 'Well, we tried and it failed and we should get out," said Chalmers.

The United States is stepping up its troop presence in Afghanistan and NATO has vowed to send more resources to beat back insurgents and provide security for upcoming national elections in August.

Inmates at U.S. Facility in Bagram Protest Indefinite Detention

By Greg Jaffe and Julie Tate
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 16, 2009

The prisoners at the largest U.S. detention facility in Afghanistan have refused to leave their cells for at least the past two weeks to protest their indefinite imprisonment, according to lawyers and the families of detainees.

The prison-wide protest, which has been going on since at least July 1, offers a rare glimpse inside a facility that is even more closed off to the public than the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Information about the protest came to light when the International Committee of the Red Cross informed the families of several detainees that scheduled video teleconferences and family visits were being canceled.

Representatives of the ICRC, which monitors the treatment of detainees and arranges the calls, last visited the Bagram prison on July 5, but inmates were unwilling to meet with them.

"We have suspended our video telephone conference and family visit programs because the detainees have informed us they do not wish to participate in the programs for the time being," said Bernard Barrett, a spokesman for the organization.

Although the prisoners are refusing to leave their cells to shower or exercise, they are not engaging in hunger strikes or violence. Ramzi Kassem, an attorney for Yemeni national Amin al-Bakri, said detainees are protesting being held indefinitely without trial or legal recourse.

"We don't want to hold detainees longer than necessary," said a U.S. military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We engage in regular releases and transfers when we feel a detainee's threat can be sufficiently mitigated to warrant being released or transferred. Of course, there will continue to be some detainees whose high threat level can only be successfully mitigated via detention, but we review their status regularly to assess whether other options are available."

Unlike at Guantanamo Bay, where detainees have access to lawyers, the 620 prisoners at Bagram are not permitted to visit with their attorneys. Afghan government representatives are generally not allowed to visit or inspect the Bagram facility.

President Obama signed an executive order in January to review detention policy options. The Justice Department is leading an interagency task force examining the issue and is set to deliver a report to the president on Tuesday.

In recent years, Bagram became the destination for many terrorism suspects as Guantanamo Bay came under more scrutiny through legal challenges. The last significant group transfer from the battlefield to the prison in Cuba occurred in September 2004, when 10 detainees were moved there; in September 2006, 14 high-value detainees were transferred to Guantanamo Bay from secret CIA prisons. Since then, six detainees have been moved there.

The Bagram prison population, meanwhile, has ballooned. U.S. officials are building a bigger facility there that will hold nearly 1,000.

The Bagram facility includes inmates from Afghanistan as well as those arrested by U.S. authorities in other countries as part of counterterrorism efforts. The prison now holds close to 40 detainees who are not Afghan citizens, many of whom were not captured in Afghanistan.

In April, a D.C. district judge ruled that the Supreme Court decision that extended habeas corpus rights to detainees at Guantanamo Bay also applied to a certain set of detainees held at Bagram -- those who were not arrested in Afghanistan and who are not Afghan citizens. The Justice Department has appealed the decision.

The indefinite detention of Afghan prisoners also has been a source of anger among Afghan citizens, human rights advocates say. "U.S. detention policy is destroying the trust and confidence that many Afghans had in U.S. forces when they first arrived in the country," said Jonathan Horowitz, a consultant at the Open Society Institute, which seeks to promote democracy around the world. Horowitz is in Afghanistan interviewing the relatives of Bagram detainees, as well as former Bagram prisoners.

Scores Killed in Xinjiang Protests

BBC's Chris Hogg says violence comparable to Tiananmen Square

Violence in China's restive western region of Xinjiang has left at least 140 people dead and more than 800 people injured, state media say.

Several hundred people were arrested after a protest, in the city of Urumqi on Sunday, turned violent.

Beijing says Uighurs went on the rampage but one exiled Uighur leader says police fired on students.

The protest was reportedly prompted by a deadly fight between Uighurs and Han Chinese in southern China last month.

The BBC's Chris Hogg in Shanghai says this is one of the most serious clashes between the authorities and demonstrators in China since Tiananmen Square in 1989.

'Dark day'

Eyewitnesses said the violence started on Sunday in Urumqi after a protest of a few hundred people grew to more than 1,000.

Xinhua says the protesters carried knives, bricks and batons, smashed cars and stores, and fought with security forces.

Wu Nong, news director for the Xinjiang government, said more than 260 vehicles were attacked and more than 200 shops and houses damaged.

Most of the violence is reported to have taken place in the city centre, around Renmin (People's) Square, Jiefang and Xinhua South Roads and the Bazaar.

See detailed map of Urumqi city centre

The police presence was reported to be heavy on Monday.

Adam Grode, an American studying in Urumqi, told Associated Press: "There are soldiers everywhere, police are at all the corners. Traffic has completely stopped."

UIGHURS AND XINJIANG Uighurs are ethnically Turkic Muslims They make up about 45% of the region's population. 40% are Han Chinese China re-established control in 1949 after crushing short-lived state of East Turkestan Since then, large-scale immigration of Han Chinese Uighurs fear erosion of traditional culture Sporadic violence since 1991 Attack on 4 Aug 2008 near Kashgar kills 16 Chinese policemen In pictures: Xinjiang protests Q&A: China and the Uighurs China tells its own story Accounts of Xinjiang violence

A witness in the Xinjiang city of Kashgar told AP there was a protest there on Monday of about 300 people but there were no clashes with police.

It is still unclear who died in Urumqi and why so many were killed.

The Xinjiang government blamed separatist Uighurs based abroad for orchestrating attacks on ethnic Han Chinese.

But Uighur groups insisted their protest was peaceful and had fallen victim to state violence, with police firing indiscriminately on protesters in Urumqi.

Dolkun Isa, a spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) in Munich, disputed the official figures, saying the protest was 10,000 strong and that 600 people were killed.

He rejected reports on Xinhua that it had instigated the protests.

Xinhua had quoted the Xinjiang government as blaming WUC leader Rebiya Kadeer for "masterminding" the violence.

But Mr Isa said the WUC had called on Friday only for protests at Chinese embassies around the world.

More than 260 vehicles were destroyed in Urumqi, officials said

Alim Seytoff, the vice-president of another Uighur group - the US-based Uighur American Association - condemned the "heavy-handed" actions of the security forces.

"We ask the international community to condemn China's killing of innocent Uighurs. This is a very dark day in the history of the Uighur people," he said.

When asked about the rioting, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that all governments must protect freedom of speech and "the life and safety of civilian populations".

A spokesman for UK PM Gordon Brown said Britain was urging "restraint on all sides".

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano said he had raised the issue of human rights with visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao in Rome.

Internet blocks

The Uighurs in Urumqi were reportedly angry over an ethnic clash last month in the city of Shaoguan in southern Guangdong province.

A man there was said to have posted a message on a local website claiming six boys from Xinjiang had "raped two innocent girls".

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Police said the false claim sparked a vicious brawl between Han and Uighur ethnic groups at a factory. Two Uighurs were killed and 118 people were injured.

BBC sources in China report they have been unable to open the Twitter messaging site in Shanghai and that message boards on Xinjiang on a number of websites were not taking posts.

Reports from Xinjiang suggest some internet and mobile phone services have been blocked.

Analysts say the government's so-called Great Firewall of China, which it uses to block unwanted internet material, will prevent large-scale dissemination of information but that dedicated internet users can bypass it fairly easily.

BBC China editor Shirong Chen says there has been ethnic tension in Xinjiang since before the founding of the People's Republic.

Some of its Uighur population of about eight million want to break away from China and its majority Han Chinese population.

The authorities say police are securing order across the region and anyone creating a disturbance will be detained and punished.

However, our China editor says there may be questions asked about their inability to prevent a protest they knew about days in advance.

Hong Kong’s Pro-Democracy March Draws Thousands

By KEITH BRADSHER

HONG KONG — Thousands of people joined a pro-democracy march here on Wednesday, although the turnout fell short of a candlelight vigil held nearly four weeks ago to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing.

An enormous crowd for the annual June 4 candlelight vigil, the largest since 1990, had raised the hopes of Hong Kong democracy advocates that the same enthusiasm might carry over to their movement. The movement has been struggling after several small successes from 2003 to 2005, including winning support for blocking the government’s planned introduction of stringent internal security legislation.

The immediacy of democracy demands here has faded somewhat as Beijing officials have ruled out direct elections for the chief executive until 2017 and the legislature until 2020.

The march on Wednesday, on the 12th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule after 156 years of British control, nonetheless drew a large crowd.

Many marchers said they were dissatisfied with government policies to deal with the economy. Unemployment in Hong Kong rose sharply over the winter and leveled off this spring at 5.3 percent — a little over half the rate in the United States, but a shock for a territory where the rate was 3.2 percent last summer.

But the largest single issue seemed to be the limits on democracy in Hong Kong. “The majority comes here for democracy, but there are other grievances against government policy,” said Sin Chung Kai, vice chairman of the Democratic Party.

When Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997, the Chinese government initially held out the possibility of full democracy after 2007, including the concept in the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s miniconstitution, but stopped short of an unequivocal promise of how and when to achieve universal suffrage.

A committee of 800 people, most with connections to Beijing, chooses the chief executive here, who must then be appointed by leaders in Beijing before taking office. Half the legislature is chosen by the public and half by a variety of interest groups, including banks, chambers of commerce, trade unions and lawyers.

The police estimated that 26,000 people had assembled in Victoria Park on Hong Kong Island as the march began. The organizers had said that they expected more to join the march along the way, and they estimated that 76,000 people took part.

The police had estimated the crowd at the June 4 Tiananmen vigil, at the same location in Victoria Park, at 62,800, while organizers put it at 150,000.

The vigil did have some carryover effect on Wednesday’s march. Jupiter Chan, a 24-year-old graduate student, said that the vigil prompted him to come to the annual democracy march this year for the first time since 2003.

“I was touched by the Fourth of June ceremony, and I felt that if I didn’t come this year, I would regret it later,” he said.

Honduras Targets Protesters With Emergency Decree

By William Booth and Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 2, 2009

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, July 1 -- The new Honduran government clamped down on street protests and news organizations Wednesday as lawmakers passed an emergency decree that limits public gatherings following the military-led coup that removed President Manuel Zelaya from office.

The decree also allows for suspects to be detained for 24 hours and continues a nighttime curfew. Media outlets complained that the government was ordering them not to report any news or opinion that could "incite" the public.

A dozen former ministers from the Zelaya government remain in hiding, some hunkered down in foreign embassies, fearing arrest. News organizations here remain polarized. Journalists working for small independent media -- or for those loyal to Zelaya -- have reported being harassed by officials.

Before emergency measures were tightened, thousands of protesters rallied Wednesday to urge Zelaya's return. They were answered by counterdemonstrations in support of the new government. Local radio reported that several bombs were found but safely defused.

Zelaya vowed that he would come back to Honduras over the weekend, while the newly appointed interim president, Roberto Micheletti, repeated in a news conference Wednesday "that when he comes into the country, he will be arrested."

Asked whether Honduras could withstand international isolation and risk losing the foreign aid that keeps the impoverished nation running, Micheletti said, "You know that the Europeans are not going to cut the aid to our country, nor will the Americans."

But on Wednesday, the Inter-American Development Bank did suspend aid, after a similar move by the World Bank. As the impasse continued in Honduras, diplomats at the Organization of American States struggled to organize a mission that would restore Zelaya to power and avoid a clash between him and the military that ousted him.

After nearly 12 hours of debate, the OAS approved a resolution shortly before dawn Wednesday that called on its secretary general, José Miguel Insulza, to undertake every effort to reinstate Zelaya. If Insulza did not succeed within 72 hours, Honduras would be suspended from the OAS, the main forum for political cooperation in the hemisphere.

The passage of the resolution prompted Zelaya to postpone a trip home he had scheduled for Thursday, which diplomats had feared could sharply escalate tensions in the Central American country.

"I am going to return to Honduras. I am the president," Zelaya told reporters Wednesday. But he added that he did not want to complicate the diplomatic efforts of the OAS over the next few days.

Insulza faces an unusually complex task in trying to reverse the coup. Normally, he would negotiate with the de facto government for the return of the deposed president. But OAS members, furious about the military ouster, do not want him to talk to Micheletti, for fear that would legitimize the new regime.

Even hard-core coup backers here say they were surprised how quickly and forcefully the Latin American countries condemned their actions.

"This coup is a mess," said the outgoing Italian ambassador, Giuseppe Magno. "Mistakes have been made on all sides, and the only solution is for a compromise. We hear that different parties are talking among themselves. That is good. The solution has to come from the Hondurans themselves. It cannot be imposed on them."

Honduras is finding itself increasingly isolated. France, Spain, Italy, Chile and Colombia began recalling their ambassadors Wednesday. The Pentagon suspended joint military operations with Honduras.

"What provoked an enormous indignation among Latin Americans, above all, was the military coup," said one diplomat involved in the planning at the OAS, referring to the way soldiers seized Zelaya at dawn and bundled him onto a plane bound for Costa Rica.

Insulza, of the OAS, is trying to establish contact with people who are not closely allied with either Zelaya or Micheletti to build a compromise, the diplomat said. It was not clear when he would fly to Honduras.

The coup is the first big test for the Obama administration's policy of seeking a more diplomatic and collegial role in a region traditionally dominated by the United States. The military action has been roundly condemned internationally, including by President Obama. But U.S. diplomats have sought to prevent a response that is so tough it leads to bloodshed.

U.S. officials said Wednesday that they would hold off formally designating the Honduran military action a "coup" until Insulza reports back to the OAS on Monday. Such a move is significant, because it would lead to the cutoff of millions of dollars in military and development aid.

However, the Pentagon said Wednesday that it had decided to reduce military contact with the Honduran armed forces. "We're still reviewing and making decisions" about what cooperation would be affected, said a spokesman for U.S. Southern Command, José Ruiz.

The U.S. military also has cut off contact since Sunday with those who orchestrated the coup, officials said. The United States has a contingent of about 700 military personnel at Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras, focused on disaster relief, humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping and counternarcotics activities in Honduras and the region.

Honduras also is facing a freeze on petroleum exports from Venezuela and a halt in trade from other Central American countries.

"In the 21st century, these kinds of coups don't last long. It is very hard for a country like Honduras to maintain this kind of position in the face of overwhelming rejection by the world, and especially the region and its major trading partners," a senior U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.

Zelaya is a close ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who led a bloc of leftist governments in pressing the OAS to suspend Honduras immediately and support Zelaya's quick return to the country -- even at the risk of his being arrested. The governments believe that unless there is a tough response to the coup, their own leftist governments could be threatened, diplomats said.

Venezuela's ambassador to the OAS, Roy Chaderton, described the approach as "diplomatic asphyxiation." The Venezuelan government provided a plane for Zelaya's trips Tuesday to the United Nations and the OAS.

Sheridan reported from Washington.

Iran Crisis: Can Obama and U.S. Deal with a Divided Iran?

By Joe Klein

"The most treacherous government is Britain," Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, intoned at Friday prayers on June 19, and I had to laugh. The Supreme Leader, in the midst of announcing a crackdown on the Green Revolution demonstrators, was sounding like the lead character in the most famous contemporary Iranian novel, My Uncle Napoleon, a huge hit as a television series in the 1970s. Uncle Napoleon is a beloved paranoid curmudgeon, the Iranian Archie Bunker. He blames everything — the weather, the economy, the moral vagaries of his family — on the British. This has been a constant theme in Iranian public life for at least 100 years, although the U.S. has supplanted Britain as the Great Satan, the source of all Iranian miseries, since the revolution of 1979. (See pictures of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman whose death has rallied the opposition.)

Suddenly, now, the Brits were back, and you had to wonder why. Certainly the BBC's Persian service, the most popular source of news for better-educated Iranians, was a real problem for the regime. Khamenei and various flunkies also blamed the U.S., especially the CIA, for the unrest, but the attacks on the Great Satan were muted — a curious development. Was it due to Barack Obama's initial, temperate response to the rigged election results? Was it a recognition that Obama's Cairo speech and New Year's greeting to the Iranian people had made him popular across the Persian political spectrum, a less convincing Satan than George W. Bush had been? Was it a pragmatic recognition that one way for the regime to regain credibility with its own people would be to open negotiations with the Obama Administration, thereby demonstrating that it had credibility with the most powerful country in the world? These questions, which roiled Obama's foreign policy team and the international community as the Iranian crisis ended its second week, reflected a growing sense that the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime would prevail against the demonstrators, but had seriously wounded itself in the process. (See the top 10 players in Iran's power struggle.)

Of course, Uncle Napoleon had a point. Iran has been a long-standing target of foreign meddling. It was not just the CIA-assisted coup in 1953 against the popular democratic Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, which Obama mentioned in his Cairo speech. It was also the Western support for the Shah and, worst of all in the minds of Iranians, the U.S. support for Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, including the provision of chemicals that Saddam used to concoct poison gas. This remains an open wound in Iran. (See "In Tehran, Terror in Plain Clothes.")

On election day, I interviewed a woman in southern Tehran whose husband was a chemical victim of the war. There are thousands and thousands of such people among the estimated 1 million Iranian casualties of the conflict. Indeed, the war defines the current division at the top of the Iranian establishment: the breach is between the generation that made the revolution of 1979 — leaders like Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the former Presidents Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammed Khatami, among others — and the generation that fought the Iran-Iraq war, led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his cohort among the battle-hardened leadership of the Revolutionary Guards Corps. The war led to a significant militarization of Iranian society, and the Supreme Leader, a member of the 1970s generation, has drifted away from his contemporaries toward the military. Among the rumors and major questions emerging from the election was whether the rigging was a quiet coup, staged by the Ahmadinejad generation against its revolutionary elders. "It is an open question whether the Supreme Leader is really in charge or is just a front for the military, led by Ahmadinejad," an Iranian analyst speculated. But the point is moot: Khamenei, who had attempted to stand above the Iranian factions, is now yoked to Ahmadinejad. (Read "The Turbulent Aftermath of Iran's Election.")

Khamenei's old colleagues consider this a perversion of the role of Supreme Leader — and perhaps the last best hope of the Green Revolution demonstrators was that Rafsanjani, the most powerful of the dissidents, could persuade the Assembly of Experts, which appoints and can dismiss Supreme Leaders, to take action against Khamenei. Various U.S. government sources told me they believe that the Experts are divided: one-third supporting Rafsanjani, one-third supporting the Supreme Leader, one-third undecided. It is likely that the Experts will follow the wind, unwilling to challenge the government unless the situation in the streets becomes decisively more brutal and chaotic. Rafsanjani's fate — whether he is able to hold on to his posts as chairman of the Assembly of Experts and of the Expediency Council, or perhaps get himself named the next Supreme Leader — may be the clearest barometer of the Green Revolution's success.

It seems clear that Obama's carefully calibrated remarks about the events in Iran were intended to address the Uncle Napoleon factor, and also to keep the door open for negotiations with the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime. It seems equally clear that the criticism from Senator John McCain and other neoconservatives was, in part, an emotional response to the events in the streets, but also an effort to score political points against a popular President and, long term, an attempt to prevent any negotiations with Iran from taking place. McCain won and lost during the course of the battle: the terrible events in the streets — especially the public death of young Neda Agha-Soltan, recorded on a cell-phone video — made it necessary, and appropriate, for the President to move in McCain's direction and use tougher language condemning the Iranian security forces, even if Obama continued to refuse to question the legitimacy of the Iranian government.

But McCain also lost, because of the bluster and false analogies of his comments. He compared Obama's diffidence to Ronald Reagan's forcefulness in proclaiming the Soviet Union an "evil empire" in the 1980s — but even the most pro-American Iranians were infuriated by George W. Bush's attempt to lash their country into an "axis of evil" with their mortal enemy Iraq and North Korea. The situations in Iran and the Soviet Union were nowhere near analogous. Iranians in the streets were looking for greater freedom, not the overthrow of the regime. The neocon effort to turn the Iranians into East European rebels against the Soviet Union was as crudely misleading as Benjamin Netanyahu's fantasy that the Iranian government is a "messianic apocalyptic cult" led by mad mullahs likely to nuke Israel. The truth is, Iran's government is a conservative, defensive, rational military dictatorship that manages to subdue its working-class majority softly, by distributing oil revenues downward. (On June 23, Ahmadinejad announced that doctors' salaries would be doubled, for example.)

"The Iranian government has been weakened and tainted by the events," an Arab diplomat told me. The international implications of that weakness are unknowable, for now. "I could give you very convincing arguments either way," an Obama Administration official told me, speaking of the prospects for negotiations with the regime. The prevailing view was that the Iranians would withdraw for a time and attempt to get their house in order. But it is also possible that the regime will move aggressively toward negotiations with the U.S., in order to convey the impression of stability and international legitimacy to its people. If that happens, the Obama Administration may be in position to gain concessions from the Iranians in the area where the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad forces were least willing to negotiate — Iran's nuclear program. "Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, they have to reveal all their nuclear activities, which they haven't done," a senior Administration official told me.

It is not impossible that a weakened Iranian regime might be willing to engage on these issues — especially if, as the Iranians insist, they are not attempting to weaponize the uranium they are enriching. Such negotiations would be a diplomatic risk worth taking. They would be a significant political risk, however — with McCain and others screaming appeasement. Whether or not to negotiate, now that the Iranian government has disgraced itself in the eyes of the world, is sure to be a defining moment for the Obama Administration.

Showdown Looms in Honduras: Rival Vows to Arrest Ousted President on His Return

By William Booth
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 1, 2009

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, June 30 -- The two presidents of Honduras were headed on a collision course Tuesday, as the president ousted by a coup vowed to return and his replacement threatened to arrest him the minute he lands.

Neither side seemed willing to bend in a looming confrontation that is the first test of the Obama administration's diplomacy and clout in the hemisphere.

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, removed from office Sunday in a military-led coup, addressed the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Tuesday and said he would fly back to Honduras on Thursday, accompanied by the head of the Organization of American States.

But the newly appointed interim president of Honduras, Roberto Micheletti, warned that if Zelaya returns, he will be arrested, tried and sent to prison for years. Micheletti's claim on the presidency is seen as illegitimate by the international community.

"If he comes back to our country, he would have to face our tribunals and our trials and our laws," Micheletti said in an interview with The Washington Post at his residence in the hills overlooking the capital. "He would be sent to jail. For sure, he would go to prison."

Micheletti said he did not see any way to negotiate with the Obama administration and international diplomats seeking a return of Zelaya to power because, Micheletti insisted, Zelaya was guilty of crimes against the country.

"No, no compromise, because if he tries to come back or anyone tries to bring him back, he will be arrested," Micheletti said.

At the United Nations, Zelaya told the assembly, "I'm going back to calm people down. I'm going to try to open a dialogue and put things in order."

Zelaya, whose politics moved to the left during his three years in office, has become close to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who has been the most vocal and belligerent critic of the coup, threatening to "overthrow" the new government.

"When I'm back, people are going to say, 'Commander, we're at your service,' and the army will have to correct itself," Zelaya told the assembly. "There's no other possibility."

Yet other possibilities do exist. Thousands of Hondurans rallied Tuesday in the central plaza of the capital, Tegucigalpa, to support the forced removal of Zelaya and to shout their support for the armed forces.

"It would be a disgrace to have him back in the country," said Emilio Larach, owner of a large building materials company here, who attended the rally to denounce Zelaya. "He created hate among the Honduran people. Everyone in the government was against him."

As the rally was underway, a small, anxious but growing group of Honduran lawmakers sought to build a coalition to endorse a compromise measure to allow for Zelaya's return. According to one participant in the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of derailing the negotiations, the compromise would include a general amnesty for everyone involved, including the coup leaders and members of the military, while Zelaya would have to abandon his plan to hold a referendum that could lead to a change in the Honduran constitution.

Critics have charged that Zelaya in his nonbinding referendum was seeking a change in the constitution that would allow him to serve for more than one term as president.

The lawmakers seeking a compromise, however, have not yet begun to work with U.S. diplomats here, according to U.S. Embassy press officer Chantal Dalton. "They haven't been in contact with us," Dalton said. "This is smoke and signals. Nobody here has heard anything."

At the United Nations, Zelaya said he would agree not to push his referendum. "I'm not going to hold a constitutional assembly," he said. "And if I'm offered the chance to stay in power, I won't. I'm going to serve my four years."

Zelaya, a wealthy rancher and timber baron, said he would go back to his farm after his term ends in January. "I come from the countryside, and I'm going to go back to the countryside," he said.

The streets of Tegucigalpa were calm Tuesday, though the city is awash in rumors that Venezuela is marshaling forces for a possible invasion.

Micheletti cautioned the world that his army was on alert and prepared to defend the country. Honduran reservists have been called to their barracks to donate blood.

"Our army also consists of 7.5 million people prepared to defend freedom and liberty," said Micheletti, who stressed that Hondurans are a peaceful people.

Media outlets friendly to Zelaya have been shut down, and some reporters are hiding -- as are a dozen members of Zelaya's former cabinet. Most Hondurans must rely on newspapers and television stations that support the coup. Cable news outlets such as CNN en Español have occasionally been blacked out, though it is still possible to get outside news via satellite.

Micheletti and his supporters insist that the world does not understand what happened here. They say that Zelaya was found guilty by a Supreme Court tribunal, that his arrest by the military was legal and that Zelaya was attempting to circumvent Honduras's Congress and courts by staging the referendum.

The interim president said he thought his country could hold out long enough for world opinion to turn its way. Venezuela has said it would suspend oil shipments, and Honduras's neighbors -- El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua -- announced that they would stop overland trade.

"That is why I want to make a call to our allies in the United States, that they should stick with us at this very important moment in the life of the country," Micheletti said. "The economy of our country is completely destroyed -- because of the acts of the former government. If aid [from the United States and Europe] keeps coming, we will show that every little penny that we borrowed will be spent for the people of this country."

Micheletti promised that Honduras would hold presidential elections in November and that a new president would take office in January. Micheletti, who is a leader of the Liberal Party, the same party that Zelaya belongs to, vowed that he would not run for president.

Micheletti also said that Zelaya is a master at bending world opinion his way. Another source in the government here said that Zelaya actually was wearing a crisply ironed dress shirt when he was sent into exile in Costa Rica, but that he changed to a white T-shirt to show how he was hustled out of his official residence at dawn while still in his pajamas.

Senior Obama officials said that an overthrow of the Zelaya government had been brewing for days and that 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 anti-U.S. leaders such as Chávez room to use events in Honduras to push their vision for the region.

Zelaya is an unlikely hero for the left, coming from Honduras's wealthy classes and joining a leftist bloc of Latin American countries several years after he had been elected president. But his ouster has changed the dynamics.

"Zelaya didn't have a strong constituency," said Larry Birns, director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a policy group. "And this has become a recruiting mechanism for Zelaya. It's the best thing that could have happened to Zelaya because it's allowed him to generate support."

Carlos Sosa, Honduras's ambassador to the OAS, said in a telephone interview that on Thursday he would likely join Zelaya on a flight that would leave from a U.S. airport -- he wouldn't say which one -- and land in Tegucigalpa. "Everyone wants to go," he said, noting that the secretary general of the OAS, José Miguel Insulza, and other leaders would be on that flight.

Correspondent Juan Forero in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.