Honduras: Deal or No Deal?

Days after the Honduran congress was supposed to vote on the deal negotiated to settle the Honduran crisis and signed off by both sides nothing has happened. Zelaya still is a virtual prisoner in the Brazilian Embassy and the Congress has not even set a date to meet. The same old stalling tactics are being used by the coup regime. Not a peep apparently from the US that brokered the deal. The coup leaders have thumbed their noses at the OAS and the US with impunity it seems. The US has made it worse by suggesting that they might recognise the election even if all the terms of the deal are not met. This is just asking for trouble. With so much other news taking the headlines the coup is escaping into the shadows.

There was supposed to be a unity government appointed by this Thursday but of course nothing can be done until the Honduran congress votes on the deal. They obviously intend to wait until the elections--run under the coup leaders and with many restrictions on demonstrations etc--are over. They expect the international community to recognise them even though the coup govt. did not even ratify the deal! Another farce in the making. The excerpts are from the NYTimes.

Despite Deal, No Progress on Standoff in Honduras
By ELISABETH MALKIN
MEXICO CITY - A week after an accord mediated by the United States seemed to have unblocked the political standoff that had paralyzed Honduras since President Manuel ZelayaManuel Zelaya was deposed in a June coup, progress is frozen.

... the Obama administration has hinted that it will accept the results even if the accord's terms are not fully met.

As part of the deal, both Mr. Zelaya and Mr. Micheletti had agreed to put the question of Mr. Zelaya's return to a vote in the Honduran Congress. But the accord set no deadline, and congressional leaders have yet to decide on a date for a vote.

The accord also set Thursday as a deadline to name a unity government that would oversee the election.

But none of this has happened. Critics said the accord had nothing in it to back it up but the threat not to recognize the election. Now Mr. Zelaya is unlikely to be returned to office.

American officials dismiss that conclusion, arguing that both sides have agreed to abide by Congress's decision and that the election will resolve the crisis. In an interview with the Spanish-language service of CNN this week, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, Thomas A. Shannon Jr., seemed to suggest that the accord itself was enough to guarantee the fairness of the election.

The deal "assures that these elections will move ahead peacefully and that Honduras will have a new democratically and constitutionally elected leader on Nov. 29," he said.

The comments this week stand in sharp contrast to what administration officials said a week ago when the accord was announced. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham ClintonHillary Rodham Clinton said Honduras had overcome the crisis "through negotiation and dialogue."

But the divisions in Honduras were on display on Thursday in Tegucigalpa, the capital, where Mr. Zelaya's supporters were camped outside Congress to try to force a vote on his return.

Regional splits are also appearing over how long the Honduran Congress can delay the vote and what the legislators' eventual decision should be.

Ricardo Lagos, a former Chilean president who is on the verification commission set up to monitor the accord, said Thursday that Mr. Zelaya should be returned before the election.

Critics say the de facto government appears to be stalling, expecting that once the elections go ahead, the international community will recognize them.

What is more, they say, Mr. Shannon's remarks on recognizing the elections leave the Obama administration with little leverage to enforce the accord. Christopher Sabatini, senior director for policy at the Council of the Americas, in New York, said that the Obama administration appeared willing to accept the elections' outcome rather than admit that there was no guarantee when and how Honduran legislators would vote.