by the El Reportero’s news services
Barak Obama
The first deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Craig Kelly, travelled to Tegucigalpa and met the de facto president, Roberto Micheletti, and the ousted president, Manuel Zelaya on Nov. 10.
Kelly, like the Organization of American States (OAS), is pushing Micheletti and the Honduran congress to adhere to the terms of the US-brokered Tegucigalpa-San José agreement, which contemplates the establishment of a national unity government, a congressional vote on Zelaya’s restitution (taking into account the ‘opinion’ of the supreme court), along with full international recognition of the scheduled Nov. 29 general elections.
The US has made it patently clear that it is firmly focused on the scheduled elections as the definitive way out of this nearly five-month old crisis, with Zelaya’s position now secondary. That, however, has removed all incentives for the de facto administration and the other Honduran institutions to act in good faith.
As U.S.-Colombia bases deal is signed, Lula calls for all-round transparencyThe agreement granting the US additional base facilities in Colombia has been signed. Details have yet to be disclosed, but off-1the-record briefings suggest that the content does not vary much from what the US State Department anticipated in August [SSR-09-08]. Prior to the signing of the deal, Colombian and US diplomacy got Brazil to signal that it would not oppose the agreement in the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) if all parties agree to transparency. Meanwhile Venezuela and its allies continued to depict the deal as a threat.
