TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Four U.S. Republican lawmakers met with Honduras’ interim president today in a challenge to Washington’s condemnation of the coup that brought him to power.
The brief, amicable visit with the leaders of the coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya highlights a divide in Washington, where the Obama administration is working to reinstate Zelaya but many conservatives side with the government installed after soldiers arrested the president in his pajamas and flew him into exile.
South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, the leader of the delegation, said before the trip that even calling Zelaya’s overthrow a coup is “ill-informed and baseless.”
DeMint and three representatives — Aaron Schock and Peter Roskam of Illinois and Doug Lamborn of Colorado — smiled for photographs in a book-lined office of the stately presidential palace with interim President Roberto Micheletti. They slipped out of the palace through a rear entrance, avoiding dozens of journalists waiting for a planned news conference that never materialized.
The delegation met with the major candidates in Nov. 29 elections that many call illegitimate, and with Supreme Court justices who are deciding whether Micheletti had the constitutional right to suspend civil liberties.
They did not meet with Zelaya, who is holed up with dozens of supporters in the Brazilian Embassy after sneaking back into Honduras.
Nations around the globe have condemned Zelaya’s June 28 ouster and many, including the United States and the European Union, have suspended aid to Honduras. Washington has also revoked the U.S. visas of interim leaders.
Republicans argue the actions were a legitimate reaction to Zelaya’s attempt to hold a constitutional referendum that critics believed was an attempt to undo a prohibition on a second term. Zelaya denies that was his intention.
Many conservative American politicians see Micheletti as a bulwark against the expansion of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s socialist programs in Latin America.
It’s not unusual for members of the U.S. Congress to visit shunned governments. Quite a few have visited Cuba in recent years, and both Republicans and Democrats visited Nicaragua when its Sandinista government was at odds with Washington.
But critics argue the visit by Republicans undermines international efforts to restore Zelaya to power just as both sides seem ready to negotiate. Amid mounting concerns about human rights abuses, the interim leaders are under increasing pressure from home and abroad to break the three-month stalemate paralyzing the impoverished country.
“I think that this trip potentially will muddy the waters even more, and that would not be constructive,” said Joy Olson, executive director of the Washington Office on Latin America, which promotes human rights and democracy. “The danger of this visit is that those supporting the Micheletti government re-entrench.”
Micheletti has become increasingly alienated at home after his administration imposed an emergency decree this week suspending some civil liberties, including freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. He promised to lift the decree after being criticized by his own supporters as going too far, but has yet to do so.
Differences over Honduras also are affecting President Barack Obama: DeMint has been blocking Senate votes on Arturo Valenzuela, Obama’s nominee to be assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, and Thomas Shannon, his nominee for U.S. ambassador to Brazil.
“Thanks to DeMint’s intransigence, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee can’t hold hearings to receive testimony from the most knowledgeable and relevant witnesses on our policy in Central and South America,” Democratic Sen. John Kerry said in a news release.
Florida Congressman Connie Mack, the ranking Republican on the U.S. House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, was the first U.S. lawmaker to visit Honduras after the coup. He led a congressional delegation that met with Micheletti in July.
Mack has been an outspoken critic of the U.S. government’s actions, such as revoking the visas of interim leaders, saying that Hondurans “don’t want us to stand with the ‘thugocrats’ of the Western Hemisphere like Hugo Chavez.”
U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, another ranking Florida Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, plans to head to Honduras next week.
A delegation from the Organization of American States, which has taken the lead in pushing for a negotiated resolution that restores Zelaya to power, was expected to arrive later today.
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