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| Caribbean-Latin America | |||
| Honduras isolated over Zelaya ouster | |||
| 2009-06-30 | |||
Police in the Honduran capital fired tear gas at stone-throwing supporters of Zelaya, who was toppled in an army coup on Sunday. They arrested about two dozen people. Some 1,500 protesters, some of them masked and carrying sticks, taunted solders and burned tires just outside the gates of the presidential palace in a face-off with security forces. Zelaya, a leftist, was detained and sent into exile in a dispute over his push to extend presidential terms. The coup is Central America's biggest political crisis in decades. Left-wing Latin American leaders led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced at a meeting in Managua, capital of neighboring Nicaragua, that they would withdraw their ambassadors from Honduras in protest at the coup. Leaders from Central America, also meeting in Managua, followed suit soon after, a senior diplomatic source said. Honduras, an impoverished country of 7 million people, is a major coffee producer -- and is expected to export some 3.22 million 60-kg bags in the 2008-2009 harvest season. But there were no immediate signs that output or exports were affected as ports and roads remained open. In Monday's protests in the capital, about two dozens protesters were arrested in scuffles as police cleared away some barricades behind the presidential palace. "The police surrounded us. They fired gas and they started hitting everyone," said pro-Zelaya demonstrator Joel Flores, 19, who was red-eyed and said a police officer beat him on the back with a baton.
Before he could hold the poll on Sunday, the Honduran military seized Zelaya and flew him to Costa Rica in Central America's first successful army coup since the Cold War era of dictatorships and war in the region. The Supreme Court, which last week overruled Zelaya's attempt to fire the armed forces chief, said it had told the army to remove the president.
Zelaya met Chavez, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega in Managua. Bolivia's Evo Morales and OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza were due to join the group for talks later on Monday. Zelaya, 56, is a logger and rancher who was originally close to Honduras' ruling elite but then threw his lot in with Chavez's regional bloc and has steered the country leftward. His close alliance with the Venezuelan leader, and his efforts to lift presidential term limits, upset the army and the conservative elite. Hondurans are divided over the crisis. Recent polls show support for Zelaya dropped to around 30 percent in recent months. The country, a coffee, textile and banana exporter, had been politically stable since the end of military rule in the early 1980s. Following the coup, there was panic-buying in stores and many people drew out cash or closed businesses. Disruption to the coffee industry is less likely because the current harvest season is drawing to a close and Honduras only has a few hundred thousand bags left to export. But the longer term outlook for the industry was more uncertain. Honduras was a U.S. ally in the 1980s when Washington helped Central American governments fight Marxist rebels and the United States still keeps some 600 troops at a Honduran base used for humanitarian and disaster relief operations. | |||
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #2 Zelaya met Chavez, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega in Managua. Bolivia's Evo Morales and OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza were due to join the group for talks later on Monday. Target-rich environment. I hope someone notices... |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2009-06-30 16:01 |
| #1 The usual MSM suspects who pedaled the "Bush Stoled the Election" mantra when it was Al Gore and company who sought to throw out the absentee ballots [ie military voters] as the opening moves of the Florida recount, are now plastering this as a 'coup' rather than the enforcement of Constitutional law. It was the ousted El Presidente who was attempting the coup over the Constitution. Intentional misdirection from the Ministry of Truth(tm-Big Brother). |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-06-30 08:47 |