Deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya and the interim government agreed on Saturday to create a joint Cabinet and ditch an amnesty for coup leaders, one of the ousted leader’s negotiators said.
But both measures depend on Zelaya’s return to the presidency, still far from certain four months into the standoff that emerged from the June 28 coup.
Union leader Juan Barahona, one of Zelaya’s top three negotiators, told a rally of hundreds of the president’s followers that the joint cabinet, if realized, would be composed of ministers from both governments.
The Zelaya camp, he added, opposed amnesty because such a move would mean “amnesia, forgetfulness and forgiveness, and we got cannot condone the coup.”
“If after all of this, they say that there is not going to be reinstatement [of Zelaya], what difference does it make if we made progress on anything else?” Barahona said. “Tuesday, we are going to get at that key point in detail. If on October 15 we do not have a deal, the talks will have failed.”
The formation of a national unity government and amnesty for crimes linked to the coup were two key points of the San Jose reconciliation agenda set out in August, whose central tenet calls for Zelaya’s return to office.
The discussions came ahead of a three-day pause that prolongs the uncertainty of resolving the political crisis that has paralyzed the impoverished Central American country since late June.
The resumption of talks tomorrow will come just two days before the Thursday deadline given by the Zelaya camp for his unconditional return to power.
Reinstating him any later, supporters say, risks causing a delay in presidential and legislative elections planned for Nov. 29.
“I do not understand the three-day break,” Zelaya’s wife Xiomara Castro said from within the Brazilian embassy, where the deposed leader has been holed up since his surprise return to the capital on Sept. 21. “When there’s persecution, repression, the minutes and hours count. [The pause] is a way to delay the process, with time passing and the president still not returning to power.”
A diplomatic delegation from the Organization of American States left Honduras on Thursday without resolving a months-old political impasse between de facto leader Roberto Micheletti and Zelaya, who was forced out of the country at gunpoint.
A rancher known for his trademark white cowboy hat, Zelaya veered to the left after his election and alarmed conservatives by aligning himself with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. They feared Zelaya was seeking to change the constitution to allow himself to seek reelection.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS