Excerpt from State Dept. Briefing: Honduras AND Venezuelan Opposition Group Visiting DC

[magbana]

Sometime within the last few days, we learned that Jose Miguel Insulza was planning on meeting with the Venezuelan opposition folks. Well, they are here and I guess we will find out.
magbana

MR. WOOD: Jill.

QUESTION: On Honduras, I believe Harold Koh and Tom Shannon met with some legislators today, like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen to brief them on Honduras. Can you give us a readout of that?

MR. WOOD: I don’t. I haven’t spoken to Tom at all today on that issue. But let me just tell you what I do know about what’s going on there. My understanding is that talks are supposed to restart tomorrow. And I also want to reemphasize what we’ve said, and that’s our commending President Arias’ efforts. And we want to call on all the parties in the region to commit themselves to the success of this process.

We’re in constant contact with a number of countries in the hemisphere regarding the situation in Honduras. And we believe that the Arias mediation is the right way to go, and we believe the time is now to deal with this issue, to resolve this issue. And we’re going to be providing all the support that we can to help this process.

QUESTION: Just a follow-up: Is a Venezuelan opposition group in town as well, I think? Maybe the mayor of – people who opposed to Chavez. Is anybody from the Department meeting with them?

MR. WOOD: I’m not aware of that, but I’ll take the question."
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2009/july/126274.htm

[EFerrari]

1. The secondary goal of this coup was to damage Chavez.

That was pretty obvious from the start.

[magbana]

2. Telesur just showed Insulza meeting with the Venezuelan opposition

delegation led by none other than Caracas mayor, Perfil Ledezma.