Word: zelaya
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
ROSAMARIA VALERIANO FLORES, a Honduran who was beaten while passing through a demonstration in Tegucigalpa held in support of Manuel Zelaya, the country's ousted President...
...opponents of that reasoning say it risks undermining the entire U.S. stance against the coup and is unlikely to win any Latin-American backing. "Any election run by a coup government is automatically unconstitutional," Zelaya's Foreign Minister-in-exile, Patricia Rodas, insists. "You don't further democratization in Honduras by acquiescing to coup-mongers...
Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal Washington think tank, says backing away from restoring Zelaya "sends an ugly signal that the U.S. doesn't really consider the era of using military coups in the region to be over." He adds it would fuel charges that Obama has been cowed by a small group of conservative Republican Cold Warriors in Congress. Led by South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, they recently journeyed to Honduras to show their support for Micheletti and are holding up diplomatic appointments to protest Obama's opposition to the coup...
...Zelaya, however, isn't always helping his own cause. After setting up in the Brazilian embassy last month, he claimed Israeli mercenaries were trying to zap him and his entourage with high-frequency radiation. Worse, David Romero, a director at Radio Globo, one of the shuttered pro-Zelaya stations in Honduras, spoke approvingly of Hitler's efforts to "finish off" the Jews, "because if there is anyone who is harmful to [Honduras], it's the Jews and the Israelites." Romero later apologized for the remarks, but they were an unsettling reminder of the Latin-American left's increasing tendency toward...
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...