Zelaya vows return to Honduras
Written by Patrick Markey and Mica Rosenberg
Wednesday, July 01, 2009 3:40:16 PM
TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Ousted President Manuel Zelaya vowed on Tuesday to return to Honduras flanked by foreign leaders to serve out his term, defying a warning from an interim government that he faces immediate arrest. Gathering international support at the United Nations and Organization of American States, Zelaya said the Argentine and Ecuadorean presidents and the U.N. General Assembly and OAS chiefs would accompany him back to Honduras on Thursday.
But in a move fueling confrontation in Central America's worst political crisis in decades, the interim government established after Zelaya was forced out by troops said the leftist would be captured if he returned.
Several thousand demonstrators rallied to applaud Zelaya's ouster in the capital Tegucigalpa, after a day of clashes between riot police and the toppled leader's supporters broke out near the presidential palace.
"I am going back to Honduras on Thursday, I'm going to return as president," Zelaya said after the U.N. General Assembly urged member states to recognize only his government.
The coup against Zelaya -- a timber magnate toppled in a dispute over his push to allow presidential re-election beyond a single four-year term -- has been greeted by a tide of condemnation from U.S. President Barack Obama to Zelaya's leftist allies in Latin America.
Zelaya remains a divisive figure in Honduras, an impoverished coffee, textile and banana-exporter of 7 million people, especially after he allied himself with fierce U.S. foe Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Enrique Ortez, the interim government's foreign minister, told CNN's Spanish-language channel that Zelaya had charges pending against him for violating the constitution, drug trafficking and organized crime.
"As soon as he enters he will be captured. We have the warrants ready so that he stays in jail in Honduras and is judged according to the country's laws," he said.
But in a development that could offer an opening for negotiations on ending the stand-off, the interim government said it would send a delegation of politicians, business leaders and lawyers to Washington on Wednesday for talks.
Roberto Micheletti, sworn in as caretaker president by Congress soon after the coup, announced the mission after Zelaya traveled to New York and Washington to address the United Nations and Organization of American States.
OAS HOLDS LATE NIGHT SPECIAL SESSION
After arriving in Washington, Zelaya met Assistant Secretary of State Tom Shannon.
"We recognize him as the legal constitutional president of Honduras, and underscore our commitment to work with the OAS to restore Honduras' constitutional order," Shannon told Reuters, speaking in a hallway of the OAS building.
The OAS began a special session late on Tuesday that continued into Wednesday to debate its role in the situation.
Zelaya insists he will return to complete his mandate, which ends in early 2010, but said he did not intend to run for president again.
"Some sort of negotiation will have to occur," said Shannon O'Neil at the Council on Foreign Relations. "For the international community, the most acceptable solution is that Zelaya comes back and completes the last several months of his term as president, and then steps down."
CHAVEZ ALLY
The crisis erupted as Honduras struggles with a sharp decline in remittances from Hondurans living in the United States and vital textile exports. Thousands of jobs have already been lost due to the slowdown in exports.
The World Bank said it had "paused" all program lending to Honduras following the coup. [ID:nN30445897] Standard & Poor's, worried about the economic impact, placed Honduras "B-Plus" credit rating on its CreditWatch negative category.
But coffee producers told Reuters exports had not been affected even after protesters blocked parts of major highways in the interior of the country.
In office since 2006, Zelaya had upset conservative elites with his growing alliance with Chavez, who is championing a revolutionary brand of socialism across Latin America.
Central America's first military coup since the Cold War came after Zelaya angered Congress, the courts and the army with a push for constitutional changes to allow presidential re-election.
Micheletti, who is backed by the country's business and political elite and has said he plans to stay on until an election in November. He told Reuters on Monday that the coup had saved Honduras from swinging to radical socialism.
In Tegucigalpa, anti-Zelaya protesters waving blue-and-white Honduran flags packed a square to back Micheletti and protest against the return of a leader they say wants to follow the socialist model.
"We are defending democracy, the constitution. Zelaya violated the constitution," said Jose Manzanares, an engineer. "We don't want him here."
Pro-Zelaya protests several blocks away were calmer than on Monday, when masked demonstrators clashed with security forces by the presidential palace. Troops and police tightened security at the international airport, but traffic was back to normal and many stores and cafes reopened for business, although schools remained shut.
Public support for Zelaya had dropped as low as 30 percent in recent months, with many people uncomfortable over his tilt to the left in a country with a longtime conservative, pro-Washington position.
The U.N. General Assembly called on its 192 member states to recognize only Zelaya's government, calling in a resolution for "the immediate and unconditional restoration of the legitimate and constitutional government."
Zelaya said he had only sought to improve the lot of poor Hondurans but had been treated harshly by the army and business interests. "No one has put me on trial. No one has called me to a court to defend myself, no-one has told me what the crime is," he told the assembly.
Labels: HONDURAS, MANUEL ZELAYA
Read more...
Honduras battles tide of support for ousted Zelaya
Written by Patrick Markey
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 3:07:08 PM
TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduras' interim government battled on Tuesday against a tide of international support for ousted President Manuel Zelaya who vowed to return home after troops toppled and exiled him in a coup. Honduras faces growing pressure to reinstate Zelaya, an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who was forced out on Sunday and spirited away by the army to Costa Rica in the first military putsch in Central America since the Cold War.
The Honduran capital Tegucigalpa was mostly quiet by Monday night after hundreds of Zelaya supporters clashed during the day with riot police and troops to demand his return to power in one of the world's major coffee producers.
There were no immediate signs coffee output or exports -- expected to total 3.22 million 60-kg bags in the 2008-2009 harvest -- had been affected as ports and roads remained open.
In a signal of the international support behind him, Zelaya planned to speak at the United Nations on Tuesday and said he would travel back to Honduras on Thursday with Organization of American States (OAS) chief Jose Miguel Insulza.
"I am going to Tegucigalpa on Thursday. The president elected by the people is coming," Zelaya said at a meeting of leftist Latin American leaders in Nicaragua. He said he had accepted an offer by Insulza to accompany him but gave no details of how he expected to carry out his return.
Zelaya, a cowboy hat-wearing logging magnate, upset conservative elites with his growing alliance with Chavez, a fierce U.S. adversary. He riled the armed forces, courts and Congress with his quest to change the constitution to let presidents seek re-election beyond a single four-year term.
Congress named Roberto Micheletti, a conservative-leaning veteran of Zelaya's Liberal Party as interim president. His officials said they would oppose any attempt by Zelaya to return home as president.
Micheletti, who set himself up in the presidential palace despite the protests outside, told Reuters most Hondurans supported the coup, which he said had saved the country from swinging to a radical Chavez-style socialism.
"He is going to have to ask for permission," new foreign minister Enrique Ortez said about Zelaya's promise to return. "That depends whether it is legal or illegal. It could be legal if he doesn't think of himself as president."
Left-wing Latin American presidents led by Venezuela's Chavez said in Managua, capital of neighboring Nicaragua, that they would withdraw their ambassadors from Honduras in protest at the coup. Central American nations plan to do the same and announced a two-day halt in trade.
U.S. President Barack Obama called the ouster illegal. But the coup is a test for the White House in a region where Chavez and his allies have forged an anti-U.S. alliance, especially during the administration of former President George W. Bush.
Tegucigalpa spent its second night under curfew on Monday. Earlier, dozens were injured in clashes between police and stone-tossing Zelaya supporters outside the gates of the presidential palace. But most of the city was calm.
"The only way out of this is calling elections now," said Geovanni Santamaria, 25, owner of an Internet cafe.
"Honduras is more of a democracy today than it was three days ago," Micheletti told a Reuters team that had to weave through protesters, pass a military checkpoint and enter the building through a back door to interview him.
The crisis fanned old tensions between poorer Hondurans and the conservative wealthy class that ran much of Central America, after independence from Spain in the 19th century.
As street protests sparked off in Tegucigalpa on Sunday, Micheletti imposed overnight curfews for Sunday and Monday.
On Monday, security forces threw tear gas canisters from a helicopter on pro-Zelaya protesters, some of whom smashed restaurant windows, including those of U.S.-owned fast food franchises. About two dozens protesters were arrested and the Red Cross said around 30 were hospitalized with injuries.
"The police surrounded us. They fired gas and they started hitting everyone," said demonstrator Joel Flores, 19, who was red-eyed and said a police officer beat him on the back with a baton. A soldier retreated to a restaurant where diners gave him water as he bandaged a leg wounded by a rock.
In Washington, President Barack Obama said it would be a "terrible precedent" to move back to an era of military coups, and said the ouster was "not legal." The coup has presented Obama with a test as he seeks to mend his country's battered image in Latin America.
"We are very clear about the fact that President Zelaya is the democratically elected president, Obama said, adding that Washington would work with the OAS and other international bodies to seek a peaceful solution.
Zelaya, 56, is a former logger and rancher who was close to Honduras' ruling elite on taking power in 2006 but then threw his lot in with Chavez's regional bloc and steered the country leftward.
His alliance with the Venezuelan leader, and his efforts to hold a public vote on changing the constitution to let presidents seek re-election beyond a single four-year term upset the army and the rich.
His ouster was Central America's first successful army coup since its Cold War era of dictatorships and war. Condemning it put Washington in the same camp as leftist Latin American leaders who are often at ideological loggerheads with it.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States viewed Zelaya's ouster as a coup but was not legally declaring this for now. Such a formal step would require Washington to cut off most aid to Tegucigalpa.
A senior U.S. official speaking anonymously said that by holding off on a legal determination on a coup, Washington was trying to make space for a negotiated settlement.
Polls showed public support for Zelaya in Honduras has dropped to around 30 percent in recent months. The protest over his ouster was small but determined.
"We are going to be here until President Zelaya returns. Micheletti is the president of the rich and powerful who own this country," a 22-year-old electrician who gave his name as Kevin, said outside the presidential palace.
Immediate disruption to the coffee industry was unlikely as the Honduran harvest is drawing to a close with only a few hundred thousand bags left to export.
Honduras was a U.S. ally in the 1980s when Washington helped Central American governments fight Marxist rebels and the United States still keeps some 600 troops at a Honduran base used for humanitarian and disaster relief operations.
Labels: COUP, HONDURAS, MANUEL ZELAYA, NEOCOLONIALISM
Read more...
Recession is not an end to capitalism - Zelaya
Written by Larry Moonze in Havana, Cuba
Wednesday, March 04, 2009 8:27:06 PM
THE global recession does not mark an end to savage capitalism, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has warned.
Addressing the ongoing 11th International Economists Conference on Globalisation and Problems of Development at Havana’s Convention Palace on Tuesday, President Zelaya said everyone must now search for changes that would bring about a just globalization so as to save humanity.
“The current crisis stemmed from capitalism and obviously we know this crisis is grave but it is not marking the end of the capitalist system,” he said.
President Zelaya said financial capitalism and its savage globalization was not yet dead.
He said the financial meltdown that started in the USA had provoked worldwide economic recession, unemployment, capital flight and dependence in trading relations.
President Zelaya said apart from learning lessons countries must now pursue a globalization of solidarity like that being developed by Latin Americans and the Caribbean.
He said not long ago those who espoused socialism were demonised. President Zelaya said the kingdom of market forces was so powerful that it was above politics. He said it was such a manual of perfect idiocy.
“We politicians should now celebrate that there is a return of politics,” President Zelaya said.
He said today there was a possibility that leaders could retake decisions from market forces that had abused and impoverished their entire world.
President Zelaya said the return to politics over capitalist tendencies did not mean defending state fundamentalism.
He called for social morals that put limits to everything ranging from property ownership, investment, the function of society to privileges.
“There should no be hegemony of the Wall Street,” he said. “Today those who applied the Washington Consensus are defeated by history. Those people provoked today’s problems yet we still see them keep defending their fundamentalist policies. They still want to impose instruments of how to administer the world.”
President Zelaya said countries that implemented the Washington Consensus observed how the capacity of state diminished with the coming of privatization while economic liberalization produced discrimination.
He said defending society, the women and children who remained vulnerable of all humanity, meant fighting for a reformed globalization.
“We cannot continue helping organizations of inequity and violence,” President Zelaya said. “Globalisation must open its frontiers, agendas. We demand that capitalism must have morals and ethics.”
He said on the other side developing countries should improve the quality of their democracy so that it became a social exercise.
President Zelaya called on the G20, due to meet in April in London, to fulfill their commitment on making sure development cooperation with poor nations carried no conditions.
He said a new world economic order that included UN reforms was overdue.
President Zelaya said Honduras admired and respected Cuba for its fight for independence and sovereignty.
Labels: GREAT DEPRESSION II, HONDURAS, MANUEL ZELAYA, NEOLIBERALISM
Read more...
