Word: coupes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...measures could move de facto Honduran President Roberto Micheletti to sign on to the San Jose Accord, brokered by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, which stipulates Zelaya's restoration and immunity for the coup participants. They may also help restore President Obama's standing among Latin American leaders, who have unanimously condemned the coup, as Obama has, but who have questioned the U.S. President's commitment to matching his rhetoric with action. U.S. officials called the latest sanctions "a strong signal" that Obama has reversed Washington's historic tendency to abide if not back coups carried out against its foes...
...Administration also sent a significant mixed signal. It didn't use the m-word: Military. Its lawyers have determined that while Zelaya's overthrow was a coup d'etat, it was not technically a military coup. The main reason: even though soldiers threw Zelaya out of the country at gunpoint, in his pajamas, he was not replaced with a military leader. Instead, Micheletti, a civilian who headed Honduras' Congress, was made President. Other "complicating factors," as the U.S. calls them, include lingering questions about which Honduran institution - Congress, the Supreme Court or the Army - actually ordered Zelaya's removal after...
...legal semantics matter. If the State Department labels a coup "military" - the most brutal and anti-democratic kind of overthrow - it automatically triggers a suspension of all non-humanitarian and non-democracy-related U.S. aid. In the case of Honduras, State Department officials insist that those measures have already been taken without the military-coup tag. But critics, who fear Obama is keeping the Honduras coup designation downgraded to mollify conservative Republicans, argue that further steps, like freezing Honduran bank accounts in the U.S., are still available to the Administration. (Read about President Obama's challenge in Latin America...
...military coup rating is especially dicey given that two of Honduras' neighbors, El Salvador and Guatemala, recently elected leftist presidents who could also find themselves in the crosshairs of their countries' overweening generals. "I think the armies and the business elites they back in those countries are watching the Obama Administration's moves on Honduras very closely," says Vicki Gass, a senior associate at the independent Washington Office on Latin America. While Gass applauds Clinton's threat to reject Honduras' November election results as a "very positive step that shows the U.S. is serious again about multilateral effort in Latin...
...Obama Administration has political reasons for eschewing the m-word. The most important is that calling an overthrow a military coup requires certification by Congress - where Obama and Clinton foresee a fight they'd rather avoid. Conservative Republicans are angry at Obama's support of Zelaya, who they insist was trying to remove presidential term limits in Honduras and usher in a socialist government like that of his oil-rich left-wing ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. As a result, they're blocking a number of the White House's State Department appointees, including Arturo Valenzuela, Obama's pick...