Offer made by Honduran president

In an extraordinary gesture, the Honduran President, Roberto Micheletti, has offered to relinquish his seat, if ousted former president Manuel Zelaya will relinquish his claims to the presidency, according to the Washington Times‘ Sara A. Carter;

The offer represents a turnaround by Mr. Micheletti, who has insisted until now that Mr. Zelaya should have been arrested rather than deported to Costa Rica on June 28. Mr. Zelaya was deposed by the military after he sought to change the constitution to allow him to run for a second term.

But I think the real news in the story is that clintonista Lanny Davis sides with Micheletti’s government here in the US;

Lanny Davis, a prominent Washington attorney who represents the Honduran Latin American Business Council, said the new proposal “shows Mr. Micheletti is not concerned about power — he is offering to resign entirely from public life. … The question is, does Mr. Zelaya acknowledge that no one, even the president, is above the law?”

Zelaya would be well-advised to take this deal since his term in office would have ended in a few months anyway. It may be his last opportunity to return to Honduras. But I’m pretty sure that Zelaya and the Obama Administration will screw this up. the US is already moving to cut off aid to the Constitutional government of Honduras according to Reuters;

U.S. State Department staff have recommended that the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya be declared a “military coup,” a U.S. official said on Thursday, a step that could cut off as much as $150 million in U.S. funding to the impoverished Central American nation.

The official, who spoke on condition he not be named, said State Department staff had made such a recommendation to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has yet to make a decision on the matter although one was likely soon.

Washington has already suspended about $18 million aid to Honduras following the June 28 coup and this would be formally cut if the determination is made because of a U.S. law barring aid “to the government of any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree.”

So now we’ve stooped to blackmailing small countries to settle their internal affairs – I thought we were over that kind of stuff now. Isn’t that what “hope and change” was all about?

Category: Foreign Policy