Honduras: Republicans praise Obama for “reversing” policy

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Honduras: Republicans praise Obama for “reversing” policy

By Bill Van Auken
9 November 2009

Republicans in the US Senate signaled their satisfaction over the Obama administration’s recent diplomatic initiative in Honduras by lifting their months-long block on the nominations for key State Department posts related to Latin America.

The move came a week after a US diplomatic team led by the State Department’s top official on Latin American, Tom Shannon—a holdover from the Bush administration—brokered an agreement in Tegucigalpa between President Manuel Zelaya, who was toppled by a coup and forced out of the country last June 28, and the coup regime headed by Roberto Micheletti.

As has become clear over the past week, this deal has served to legitimize the principal aims of the June coup, while betraying the demands of the broad mass of workers, peasants and students that has resisted the dictatorial regime for the past four and a half months.

The agreement committed both sides—those who led the coup and those whom they overthrew—to forming a government of “national unity and reconciliation,” while making no stipulation as to who would head it.

Moreover, there was one major difference in the substance of this deal, dubbed the Tegucigalpa Accord, from an abortive agreement drafted months ago by a US-backed mediator, Costa Rican President Óscar Arias. It dropped an explicit statement that the agreement “implies the return of José Manuel Zelaya Rosales to the Presidency of the Republic until the conclusion of the present governmental term, January 27, 2010.”

Instead, it left it in the hands of the Honduran Congress, which had supported the coup, to decide in consultation with the Supreme Court, which gave the overthrow its legal blessing, whether to return the elected president to office. Also, it placed no deadlines for a vote on the question.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/nov2009/hond-n09.shtml

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1. Obama will pander in any direction, selling out Hondurans as easily as Americans.