Word: states
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...mail was not sent by the U.S. ambassador to the OAS, Lewis Amselem. But some of Amselem's recent public remarks are at odds with the Administration's stated support for restoring Zelaya. After Zelaya sneaked back into Honduras last month from an exile imposed by the military, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said he and Micheletti now had "the best opportunity" to sign a deal brokered by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias that would reinstall Zelaya while granting amnesty to the coup leaders. But Amselem, a holdover from the George W. Bush Administration, called Zelaya's surprise reappearance...
...there are growing signs that the U.S. may be willing to abandon that condition. A number of well-placed sources in Honduras and the U.S. tell TIME that officials in the State Department and the U.S.'s OAS delegation have informed them that the Obama Administration is mulling ways to legitimize the election should talks fail to restore Zelaya in time. "We're suddenly hearing from them that the one may no longer be a [precondition] for the other," says a Western diplomat in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, where Zelaya is currently holed up in the Brazilian embassy...
...international oversight of the balloting while forging a deal that reinstates Zelaya after the election so that he can finish out his term, which ends on Jan. 27. "We've always preferred a restoration of constitutional and democratic order in Honduras that includes the restoration of Manuel Zelaya," one State official tells TIME. "But the elections are going to take place either way, and the international community needs to come to terms with that fact...
Either way, the State official says the long-term needs of Honduran democracy should also be weighed. Both sides have to "construct a national dialogue" that addresses "the political polarization plaguing Honduras in the first place," the official says, adding that the election "could end up providing new political leadership that finally confronts that problem." And to their credit, the leading presidential candidates - Porfirio Lobos of the National Party and Elvin Santos of the Liberal Party - have contributed responsibly to resolving the crisis...
With that in mind, the State Department's reasoning is perhaps understandable: If Micheletti and Zelaya are the best leadership Honduras can offer right now, it's tempting to want to bless an election and move beyond the two of them as quickly as possible. But if Micheletti doesn't yield the presidency back to Zelaya by Nov. 29, whoever wins that day is likely to be a global pariah - a fact that perhaps the U.S. needs to come to terms with...