Obstructed but not yet broken, talks between representatives of Mel Zelaya and Roberto Micheletti restarted yesterday and continued on late into the night. But, yet again, the day ended and no resolution to the four-month old crisis was found. And this time, all accounts indicate negotiations have completely collapsed. “As of now we see this phase as finished,” Zelaya envoy Mayra Mejia said of talks just after midnight. In the same old story, the reinstatement of Mr. Zelaya remains the point on which Micheletti refuses to budge. According to the AP, early Thursday the Micheletti team proposed that both supporters of de facto president Roberto Micheletti and ousted president Manuel Zelaya be allowed to consult whichever branch of government they wish to decide if Zelaya should be restored to office [for a translated version of the Micheletti full proposal click here]. [Zelaya has indicated he wants the Honduran Congress to take up the issue while Micheletti has long insisted the Supreme Court decide on Zelaya’s reinstatement.] According to La Tribuna, just a few hours later, Zelaya negotiators countered the offer with its own proposal, arguing that both sides ask the Honduran Congress to restore the powers of the state to the form they had prior to June 28. Micheletti negotiators eventually rejected the counterproposal and, at 12am, Zelaya’s team said negotiations had ended, although advisers of the de facto regime maintain they will present yet another solution this morning. “When we say today, they say tomorrow. When we say tomorrow, they say the day after tomorrow. It's a game of delay,” Zelaya’s chief negotiator, Victor Meza, remarked with frustration late Thursday.
In Washington, meanwhile, Honduran election authorities came for visit Thursday and insisted they would be able to hold a free and fair election come November 29. The group of three Hondurans argued that the ballot box remains the best way to resolve the current crisis. “The majority of Hondurans want the elections to go ahead to resolve the crisis,” says Juan Saul Escober, the president of the electoral commission. Another Honduran official said that more than 118,000 poll workers have been trained to staff voting stations with U.S. funding. “The government of the United States is following a two-track policy: they support the negotiation of a political deal, but are also backing the election process,” the official said after a meeting with State Dept. officials.
And two opinions on Honduras this morning as well. In the LA Times, Abraham Lowenthal says that because of both liberal and conservative interventionists, Honduras has once again become a “sore spot” for U.S. foreign policy. “In today's circumstances, as in the 1980s, both liberal and conservative interventionists in Washington press their viewpoint with little detailed knowledge, understanding of or apparent interest in the nuances of Honduran politics,” Lowenthal argues. Prof. Lowenthal goes on. “The outlines of a solution have been clear for weeks: the brief return of Zelaya to office; the establishment of a transitional government to hold elections; the holding of the scheduled elections in November without Zelaya's participation; the dropping of charges against both Zelaya and those who removed him from office; and agreed-to monitoring of the scheduled elections. Such a compromise solution might well soon be announced, but even if that happens, it has been delayed for many costly weeks -- at the expense of Honduras and of many Hondurans -- because of the interplay of obstinate Honduran political factions and political skirmishes in Washington that have little if anything to do with Honduras.”
And in Forbes, Vivianan Krsticevic and Juan Mendez of the Center for Justice and Int’l Law provide a must-read legal response to the recent (and flawed) Law Library of Congress report on the ouster of Mel Zelaya.
Also today, major news in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal who all report on a19 state raid by the U.S. Justice department on Wednesday and Thursday which targeted members of the Mexican drug cartel, La Familia. Thus far, 303 arrests have been made in what Attorney General Eric Holder is calling “the largest strike ever” against a Mexican cartel. “While this cartel may operate from Mexico, the toxic reach of its operations extends to nearly every state within our country,” Holder maintained.
Arrests were made in 38 U.S. cities, with a particularly heavy focus in Dallas, Atlanta and Seattle. Authorities have also seized more than $32 million in American currency, 2,700 pounds of methamphetamine, 4,400 pounds of cocaine, 16,000 pounds of marijuana and 29 pounds of heroin, reports the Times. And the WSJ adds that this week’s raids were the culmination of 44 months of investigations by U.S. officials. Mexican authorities, meanwhile, arrested at least six La Familia cartel members at the same time that U.S. raids took place.
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