US and Latin America split over elections | World War 4 Report
The rapid failure of an Oct. 30 accord between Honduran president Manuel Zelaya and the country’s de facto government “leaves egg on the faces of US and regional diplomats who had engineered the deal,” according to an analysis piece by the Reuters news service. (Reuters http://alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N06167824.htm , Nov. 6)
The agreement’s collapse also increases the distance between the government of US president Barack Obama http://ww4report.com/node/7856 ?which is now in effect siding with the de facto regime?and most governments in Latin America and the Caribbean. On Nov. 6 the 12-member Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) demanded Zelaya’s “immediate restitution,” as did foreign ministers at a meeting of the Conference of Latin America and the Caribbean (CALC) in Jamaica the same day.
Even diplomats and leaders who maintain good relations with the US implicitly criticized the US position. “The measures in the accord are clear and were subscribed to by the free will of the parties,” Organization of American States (OAS) general secretary José Miguel Insulza said on Nov. 5 after de facto president Roberto Micheletti named a “unity government” not backed by Zelaya. “I expect [these measures] to be fulfilled without more subterfuges, in order to reestablish democracy, institutional legitimacy and coexistence among the Hondurans.”
“[N]aturally, the person who was elected by the Honduran people to exercise the function of the president of the republic should preside” over the unity government, Insulza said in Washington. (Prensa Latina, Nov. 6; Adital, Nov. 6; LJ, Nov. 7)
In an interview with CNN en Español on Nov. 7, former Chilean president Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006), the highest-ranking member of the accord’s Verification Commission, was equally clear that Micheletti had violated the agreement when he named his own “unity government.” Asked who should head the Government of Unity and National Reconciliation, Lagos answered: “[T]he logic of this accord is that in the event that Zelaya Rosales was installed as president…there would be a national unity cabinet… When we met with Mr. Micheletti and he said what he was doing [naming a unity cabinet], we told him that this wasn’t what was agreed to and that he couldn’t do it.”
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