Word: zelaya
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...Zelaya's Back In Town...
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was 40,000 feet in the air on Sept. 21, en route to the U.N. General Assembly in New York City, when he got the news. Exiled Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, after sneaking back into his Central American country, had shown up at the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa seeking refuge. Lula, like every other world leader, has called for Zelaya's restoration ever since the Honduran was ousted by a military coup on June 28, so he had little choice but to let him into the embassy. But when Lula arrived...
...wish of left-wing Latin American leaders like Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who publicly boasted that it was he who'd urged Zelaya to go to the Brazilian mission. Whether or not that's true - and many in the Brazilian media "are skeptical that this could have happened without the Lula government giving Zelaya some sort of signal that he would be welcome" at the embassy, says Paulo Sotero, director of the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. - Brasília finds itself in the kind of diplomatic spotlight it once shunned...
...whether it likes it or not, Brazil is up to its neck in Honduras, and the hemisphere is hoping that means enhanced prospects for a negotiated settlement between Zelaya and coup leaders like de facto Honduran President Roberto Micheletti. Zelaya has complicated things for Brazil by making hyperventilated comments, claiming last week that "Israeli mercenaries" were targeting him and his entourage with high-frequency radiation. Micheletti, meanwhile, has gone over the top this week, expelling an Organization of American States (OAS) delegation and trying to shut down constitutional rights in Honduras. He even gave Lula until early next week...
...because most analysts agree that the Honduras coup sends a dangerous signal to the region's fledgling democracies, they feel that having Brazil's respected heft thrown more directly into the mix could help negotiations. Says another source close to Lula, "I think the talks are evolving now that Zelaya is back and under our protection." If an accord actually gets inked in Honduras, Brazil's image as a regional power broker will take off. And if not, Lula at least will win points with the leftist base of his Workers Party. "Even if it doesn't work...