A group of Latin American countries held up meetings of the UN’s Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland Monday, in protest against the presence of Honduran ambassador to the UN, Delmer Urbizo. Urbizo, appointed by the ousted Manuel Zelaya, has since sided with the Micheletti government, and so representatives to the UN from Venezuela and the Dominican Republic made strong statements against the Urbizo’s participation in Council meetings. “My government does not recognize any diplomatic representative of the de facto regime headed by Micheletti,” Homero Hernandez tells AFP. Representatives from Brazil and Argentina eventually called an motion to debate the matter in order to break the impasse—an event which was supposed to occur later in the day, according to AFP. [Costa Rica’s La Nación reports that the president of the Human Rights Council, Alex Van Meeuwen of Belgium, ended up denying the Honduran diplomat the right to speak on the floor yesterday and asked him to leave the session.] Also this morning, the AP reports that Costa Rica’s Oscar Arias plans to meet with the Honduran presidential contenders this week, telling them their election would not be recognized by the international community under the current situation. “The idea is to speak with them frankly,” Arias tells the AP. The State Dept.’s Craig Kelly reiterated the U.S. position as well on the election matter, saying that the de facto regime’s acceptance of the San Jose Accords would be the best way to resolve the crisis.
DOS also expressed concern on Monday over Venezuela’s decision to buy over $2 billion in military goods from Russia. According to spokesman Ian Kelly, the U.S. has “concerns in general about Venezuela's stated desire to increase its arms build-up, which we think poses a serious challenge to stability in the Western Hemisphere.” He added that the U.S. was also worried about an arms race in the region (something OAS Sec. General José Miguel Insulza said was not yet occurring, when speaking at the CAF conference last week).
The BBC reports that at another round of UNASUR meetings, beginning today in Quito, will take up the issue of weapons and militarization once again. The stated objective of the meeting is for UNASUR members to reach a level of “mutual confidence” with one another on establishing mechanisms for the exchange of military and security information, the BBC says. Brazil, in particular, has said member nations should be transparent about their military purchases with countries outside the region. In turn, it has said it would make public all details of its recent military deal with France. The idea of having UNASUR inspect each country’s military bases, presented at the last meeting of the group by Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, will likely also be raised.
In the spirit of talks, Correa’s Ecuador announced that its foreign minister Fander Falconi would meet with Colombian foreign minister Jaime Bermudez early next week at the UN’s General Assembly as well. The two countries have not held direct talks in over a year and a half, after Colombia struck a FARC camp in Ecuadorean territory. Negotiations are said to be “discreet” and will be aided by the Carter Center and the OAS. For his part, Falconi urged low expectations for the first encounter, writes the AP. “We are going to start a dialogue, but the two societies, the two peoples, should understand that we are not going to immediately re-establish diplomatic relations.”
In other news, the UN General Assembly’s head, Nicaragua’s Miguel D’Escoto, finished his term yesterday and the Miami Herald writes a critical appraisal of his time in office. “For this 76-year-old Catholic priest turned diplomat, flanking a president deposed in an early-morning coup, illustrates a new kind of U.N. leadership: one that takes stands and chooses sides. He deliberately uses his position to represent developing nations in the face of global power and says efforts by ‘empires’ to sideline him failed.” The Inter-American Dialogue’s Peter Hakim also had less than gushing reviews of his tenure. “In a region marked by huge ideological rifts, he planted himself to one side of that rift and contributed more to the polarization. It wasn't very constructive.”
The White House also signed a one-year extension of the Cuban trade embargo on Monday, dashing the hopes of many looking for deep changes in U.S.-Cuba policy. The measure was largely symbolic says the MH, but according to CDA’s Sarah Stephens, President Obama had forfeited a chance to send a message to Havana and the rest of Latin America that he was removing one of the foundations for the U.S. embargo against Cuba with the signing. At the same time, SFRC ranking member, Richard Lugar, introduced a bill Tuesday that would extend trade preferences to Uruguay under the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act. The bill’s proposal came after a meeting with Uruguayan President Tabaré Vázquez in Washington.
And finally, the AP reports the arrest of 31 Mexican police officers suspected of having ties to Mexican drug cartels. The arrests came after months of investigations, beginning last October, when “federal police arrested seven suspected Zeta accountants and found evidence of monthly payments to Hidalgo police from the gang, which is linked to the Gulf cartel.”
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