U.S. State Department Returns to a New Honduras
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U.S. State Department diplomat Craig Kelly returned to Honduras on Tuesday to make his fourth attempt in five months to reunite leaders in this bitterly divided nation.
U.S. Embassy spokesman Michael Stevens said Kelly ”came to make intensive effort to achieve a breakthrough agreement” during a two-day visit.
Kelly met with ousted President Manuel Zelaya at the Brazilian Embassy, where he has been living since sneaking back into Honduras in late September.
Kelly also plans to meet with interim President Roberto Micheletti, who took power after Zelaya was ousted in June and is to cede his position in three weeks, and with the winner of the country’s Nov. 29 presidential election, Porfirio Lobo.
”I thank the United States for seeking a solution to Honduras’ problem … and that the United States is interested in having Micheletti leave the post as soon as possible,” Zelaya told the local Radio Globo station following his meeting with Kelly.
”Washington recognizes that I am president of Honduras,” Zelaya claimed.
Such statements are vehemently inaccurate. Manuel Zelaya has alone perpetrated continued instability and economic turmoil since holing himself up in the Brazilian embassy, stirring geopolitical tension and stifling foreign investment in the process.
Micheletti’s government has repeated that Zelaya faces arrest on various charges if he leaves the embassy under any terms other than an asylum arrangement in another country. Zelaya’s term ends Jan. 27.
The Honduran crisis has been one of the biggest diplomatic challenges in Latin America for the Obama administration.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in Washington that ”we are encouraged by comments by President-elect Lobo,” who has talked about national reconciliation.
But Crowley said Kelly ‘‘is there to communicate clearly to a variety of parties that there are still things that Honduras has to do” to restore the constitutional order and mend the divisions caused by the coup.
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Tomas
Zelaya’s term officially would have ended yesterday. He ended his own term prematurely by trying to pull a “Hugo”, then pulled a “Sadam” by crawling into that Brazilian Embassy rat hole. Whatever happened to him was his own doing.
Posted 4:23 pm on January 28, 2010
Viva Honduras for upholding their own Constitution and for their Congress, their Courts, their Executive and their military for exacting the right amount of action, reaction and pressure during the U.S.A.’s and other left wing socialist/communist babbling threats.
The Honduran people can stand proudly among the free world and have shown that they can lead it as well.
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Posted 10:33 pm on January 6, 2010