Backdated Charges?

Was the paperwork that provided the flawed legal justification for the coup backdated?

A cable recently posted to Wikileaks provides hints supporting this conclusion, widely held by opponents of the coup.

This cable, send on June 28, 2009 from Ambassador Hugo Llorens to the State Department, announced the forced expatriation of Zelaya. It notes that the Honduran military told the US Defense Attaché that they had acted on instructions from the National Congress and Supreme Court to prevent President Manuel Zelaya Rosales from carrying out the Cuarta Urna poll scheduled for that day.

However, the very next paragraph of the cable notes that members of Congress and the Public Prosecutor, Luis Rubí, when contacted by the Embassy, said they had only ordered the military to confiscate the polling materials, and had not requested that Zelaya be arrested.

Roberto Micheletti, when contacted by the Embassy that day, repeated the claim that Zelaya had planned to convene a National Constituent Assembly right after the poll, and "that Congress had acted to preempt him."

The contradiction between what Micheletti, then head of Congress, and other members of congress told the US ambassador simply underlines what has long been clear: Micheletti and other agents of the coup deliberately ignored due process, denying many members of congress who opposed the coup the right to participate in the voting that attempted to legitimize the coup after the fact on Sunday morning.

But the reported comments of the public prosecutor, Luis Rubí, add something new to the mix.

Shortly after the coup, the Supreme Court posted online voluminous documents they claimed justified the actions legally. This included a long legal case, said to have been filed by Rubí under a request for secrecy, dated June 26, two days before the coup.

This date would have come just after Ambassador Llorens had a conversation with Chief Justice Jorge Rivera Aviles, in which Rivera Aviles said the only way a sitting president could be constitutionally removed from office was through the Public Prosecutor filing a criminal case with the Supreme Court, and being adjudicated guilty of a crime.

Yet on June 28, Luis Rubí denied to Llorens that he had requested the arrest of Zelaya; the military did not say they were acting for the Public Prosecutor; and Micheletti attributed the orders to "preempt Zelaya" to Congress, not the Supreme Court or the Public Prosecutor.

Either the Supreme Court paperwork was backdated to June 26, or everyone was lying to Ambassador Llorens on June 28.

A subsequent cable dated July 2, 2009 contains a timeline of events written by Ambassador Llorens to the State Department.

This timeline has no entry for charges filed by Public Prosecutor Luis Rubí on Friday, June 26, as claimed in the documents posted by the Supreme Court.

It only states that on June 30, e.g., two days after the coup d'etat, that Rubí filed 18 charges against Manuel Zelaya Rosales, in an ordinary criminal court, following a document issued by the Supreme Court that categorized Zelaya as a private citizen as a consequence of the congressional actions of June 28.

Llorens writes:

While there have been claims that the Supreme Court issued a warrant for Zelaya's arrest, the president of the Supreme Court has told us that this is not true. The only warrant we are aware of is one issued either late on June 25 or early on June 26 by a lower court ordering the seizure of polling material. It appears that the Attorney General, the military conspired with Micheletti and other leaders of Congress to remove Zelaya based on their fear that he planned to convene a Constituent Assembly immediately after the June 28 poll.

Either Rivera Aviles was lying to Ambassador Llorens, or there was no arrest warrant issued on Friday June 26, secret or otherwise, as stated in the Supreme Court documents.

These cables also go to the heart of the justification offered for the actual timing of the coup.

The crux of the justification is the allegation that Zelaya was going to call a National Constituent Assembly right after the Cuarta Urna poll. This was a rumor spread by the online newspaper Proceso Digital. On June 27, 2009, it falsely claimed that the proclamation establishing the Cuarta Urna published in the official Gaceta said this.

Llorens writes on July 2:

The online newspaper Proceso Digital prints an article alleging Zelaya's decree, published in the 25 June issue of the official paper La Gaceta, states that the 28 June poll will immediately convoke a constituent assembly. The newspaper reports that Zelaya has changed the rules at the last minute, and the poll will have consequences not previously reported.

This fits. It's the justification provided by Micheletti to Ambassador Llorens for the coup d'etat on the day of the coup. Llorens continues:

Micheletti's supporters say that publication calls for the convening of the Constituent Assembly. However, this is patently false, the publication simply states: "Are you in agreement that in the general elections of 2009, there be a fourth urn in which the people decide the convocation of a National Constituent Assembly."

What these cables are clarifying is precisely how much evidence there is for a conspiracy to sanitize the coup d'etat, a conspiracy that included producing documents purportedly from the Friday before the coup, documents that on the day of the coup, all involved disclaimed.

Hugo Llorens in the Run-up to the Coup d'Etat

Wikileaks has released another cable from Ambassador Hugo Llorens to the US State Department, this one dated June 26, 2009 and covering the events of the night of June 25, 2009, three days before the military carried out a coup d'etat.

A Spanish translation of the cable was published by Tiempo, although none of the other Honduran papers seem to be motivated to cover it.

In the summary paragraph, Llorens reports:

On the evening of June 25, the National Congress came close to bringing to the floor a vote on the removal of President Zelaya from office.

We already knew this. We were in Honduras watching events unfold on television, and we had been told to expect something like that.

Ambassador Llorens discusses how he and other senior US diplomats in the country worked to deter Congress from taking this step. He reports that they successfully deflected Congress into opening an inquiry into President Zelaya's possible legal violations. We believe this is the first confirmation of the rumored role of the Ambassador in ending the rush toward a vote by the Honduran Congress that night.

Immediately following the passage above, Llorens goes on to write

Supreme Court President Rivera told us that Congress does not have the power to impeach the President, since the repeal of such a law in 2005. Currently the only means to remove a sitting President is through the filing of a criminal case filed by the Public Ministry with the Supreme Court itself.

In other words, the Chief Justice of the Honduran Supreme Court told Ambassador Llorens on June 25, 2009, that Congress had no power to impeach a sitting President.

Notice that this cable is sent the same day, Friday May 26, that the filing by prosecutor Luis Rubí of criminal charges against Zelaya before the Supreme Court is dated as accepted by the court (Zelaya government members say this document was actually produced later and back-dated).

This is what later serves as the purported legal grounding for removing Zelaya from office, and replacing him with Roberto Micheletti.

The timing seems, at the very least, interesting.

Justice Rivera's analysis of how one can legally remove a sitting Honduran President matched our own arguments in the wake of the military kidnapping of Zelaya on Sunday, June 28.

In paragraph 4 of the cable, Llorens makes it clear when his conversation with Justice Rivera Aviles took place:

In a meeting on June 25, Honduran Supreme Court President Jorge Rivera Aviles told the Ambassador that he was extremely worried about the planned Congressional action against the President. Rivera said that congressional leaders had approached him about their plans to remove the President. Rivera said he advised against such action, which he described as illegal. Rivera said that in 2005 the Congress repealed the impeachment law. Currently the only means to remove a President was through the filing of a criminal case by the Public Ministry (Attorney General) with the Supreme Court. In such circumstances, the Supreme Court would appoint a Supreme Court Magistrate to hear the case. A ruling by the Magistrate against the President represented the only means to legally separate him/her from the office.

Thus the Supreme Court's opinion confirms that when the Honduran Congress pretended to remove President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales on June 29, 2009, it was a patently illegal act for which it had no constitutional powers.

The "legal succession" was illegal. This will come as no surprise to any of our regular readers.

The cable portrays Roberto Micheletti, head of the congress, as actively pursuing the position of president through organizing votes and working for Zelaya's removal, rather than passively receiving the presidency by "legal" succession.

The cable portrays Ambassador Llorens in somewhat ambiguous relation to the unfolding pressures for a coup. In his dealings with the congress, he urges no "premature" action. That is somewhat less than arguing that they refrain from trying to remove the sitting president at all.

In his conversations with the head of the supreme court, he seems to be seeking to define a legal procedure for removing the president-- again, not precisely discouraging the effort to do so. And while we would not say he produced the rationale, what he reports on June 25 becomes the basis for those who claim the coup was legitimate: a case brought by the public prosecutor before the supreme court.

(We assume that the Ambassador understood that such a case would have had to be tried, not merely brought; on the Honduran side, for a complex series of reasons, simply bringing the charges seemed to be enough reason to consider the president impeached.)

Ambassador Llorens comes across as a confidante of those who become the authors of the coup d'etat.

An earlier cable from June 18, 2009 documents a breakfast meeting between Llorens and Generals Romeo Vasquez Velasquez and Miguel Garcia Padgett in which he told the Generals that "the heavens would fall" if the military made any unconstitutional move.

Of course, it didn't happen that way. The US was reluctant to cut off military aid after the coup, only taking that step months later.

Diplomacy is of course a difficult dance. Llorens does report talking to President Zelaya in his June 25 cable. But the tenor of his reported remarks there is much less pointed: he says he urged Zelaya to "to do everything he could to lower the tensions and send conciliatory public messages and engage in dialogue with the opposition". He reports urging Zelaya to remember that he is president of "all Hondurans".

Comparing the two sides of his diplomacy, it is clear that Ambassador Llorens wanted actions of a specific kind from President Zelaya; whereas he himself makes no reports of urging the Congress to engage in dialogue.

Is it any wonder why many Honduran intellectuals believe that the US was complicit in formulating the coup?

While former Minister of Culture Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle, in a recent interview, absolved the ambassador of direct responsibility, he concluded that the US

was, of course, directly involved. Of course, who—I’m not able to signal and say that Ambassador Llorens was directly involved in promoting the coup. Some people believe that. I know for a fact that CIA operatives and military personnel of the United States were in direct contact with the conspirators of the coup d’état and aided the conspirators of the coup d’état. The coup was not something improvised. It was something that was laboriously and in a very punctilious manner prepared in time, so that from January onwards, you have this media campaign. All national newspapers, all major television chains and stations are involved, in this long period, in a propaganda campaign against the government, Zelaya’s government.

This legacy of distrust is not going to disappear because Honduras was readmitted to the OAS. It has not been healed by the agreement that allowed Zelaya to return to the country without facing immediate imprisonment.

It will remain a lasting legacy of US diplomacy that, while attempting not to take sides in a Honduran dispute, managed to give the authors of the coup the impression that if they just did things with an appearance of legality, everything would be fine.

When the US actually reacted, initially denouncing the coup, and much later, imposing modest sanctions, the outrage expressed by the de facto regime and the Honduran Congress told one side of the story: these authors of the coup were not expecting to be punished.

Now we have a glimpse at the other side: the communications that gave these actors the impression that removing the sitting president would not be problematic, as long as it was done using the correct legal procedure, and as long as it did not lead to the imposition of a military junta-- even for the short six months of Zelaya's remaining term of office.

Blustering Bravado

Roberto Micheletti does not believe in free speech, even though it is protected under the Honduran Constitution. He actively suppressed free speech in Honduras by forcibly closing dissenting media outlets during his regime.

But he also doesn't understand free speech as protected in the US Constitution and law. He told El Heraldo he intends to sue Ambassador Hugo Llorens in US court over what he wrote about Micheletti in the leaked State Department cables on Wikileaks once Llorens is no longer an Ambassador.

"I will file a case against him so that he proves to me all the things he says I've committed,"

said Micheletti. The cable in question is the one that states that according to embassy sources, Micheletti is a partner in the firm granted the concession to the Nacaome dam as part of "gazetazao". What the cable says about Micheletti is

While the de facto regime leader Roberto Micheletti and his colleagues portrayed themselves as practitioners of efficient and honest government, they appear to have cut a significant number of back room deals, which were egregious even by local standards. The dam concession is the prime example.

and

Credible Embassy sources have directly implicated Micheletti and some of his closest business partners in this deal.

and

According to Embassy sources, Micheletti was one of the Honduran partners in the consortium granted the concession. The chief actors included Saavedra, Micheletti, Minister of Public Works Saro Bonano, and Micheletti intimates Johnny Kafati and Roberto Turcios. It is inconceivable that this deal could have been put together without Micheletti's knowledge.

But this was not public speech and hence is not liable as defamation or slander. Llorens didn't publish this publicly, he informed his employer as part of private business communications which later, through no fault of Llorens, became public. It's private, protected speech as a matter of US law.

Micheletti told HRN radio that he would file the case in US court once Llorens loses his diplomatic immunity.

"I'm not afraid of him nor am I afraid of the gringos, nor do I fear anyone."

This should be interesting. Micheletti can get a case filed long distance with money to hire lawyers; lawyers will be happy to take his money; but perhaps Micheletti forgot he lost his US visa and therefore cannot enter the US to testify in the case. In any event, there is no case here.

This is a lot of bluster and bravado with no legal basis under US law.

Hugo Llorens (18 June 2009): There won't be a coup

The French paper Le Monde reports today on two US State Department cables from Hugo Llorens, US Ambassador to Honduras, to the State Department, one dated 18 June, 2009, and a follow-up dated 19 June 2009. (These cables are not yet up on any of the Wikileaks mirror sites, or Le Monde's cable browser.) For our non-French-speaking audience, here are highlights:

On June 18, 2009, just ten days before the coup, Hugo Llorens wrote that he did not believe in the rumors of a coup then circulating in Honduras (rumors we personally heard as well, from trusted colleagues):

"At present we do not believe that the military leaders have any intention of attacking the legitimate government"

Llorens concluded.

Llorens reported having breakfast with General Romeo Vasquez Velasquez and General Miguel Garcia Padgett and receiving their assurance that the military would not move against the government of Manuel Zelaya. They told Llorens they had spoken in private to politicians to put pressure on them.

Vasquez Velasquez told Llorens that the military was in an intolerable situation because they had been ordered to carry out a poll which was considered illegal by the Honduran judiciary and the election tribunal. He told Llorens that the military "will not do anything without the support of the American administration."

On June 19, Le Monde reported, the tone of Lloren's cables changed:

"Honduras rushes perhaps to a major political confrontation."

Llorens reported his aim to reason with Zelaya and bring him to a face-saving solution to the confrontation. He reported that the Embassy had

"no information suggesting that Zelaya or a member of his government intend to trample democracy and suspend constitutional guarantees. "

Llorens continued to

"believe that Honduran democratic institutions are strong enough to survive, even under stress. "

As Le Monde notes, nine days after the June 19 cable, the military, Congress, and Supreme Court staged the coup.

The jury is still out on whether there are democratic institutions in Honduras strong enough to survive the coup and its aftermath.

Who's Who in Hugo Lloren's Cable

Looking at the list of people receiving Hugo Lloren's cable available from Wikileaks, presented in our previous post, there's something odd in the list of recipients.

Here's the list of addressees:

FM AMEMBASSY TEGUCIGALPA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 0237
INFO RUEHZA/WHA CENTRAL AMERICAN COLLECTIVE IMMEDIATE
RUEHCV/AMEMBASSY CARACAS IMMEDIATE 0735
RHEHAAA/THE WHITE HOUSE WASHDC IMMEDIATE
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC IMMEDIATE
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE
RUEIDN/DNI WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE
RHEHAAA/NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE
RUMIAAA/USSOUTHCOM MIAMI FL IMMEDIATE

and further, in the body it notes distribution to:

WHA FOR A/S TOM SHANNON
L FOR HAROLD KOH AND JOAN DONOGHUE
NSC FOR DAN RESTREPO

Tom Shannon was, at that time, nominated as ambassador to Brazil but was still Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs. His nomination to become ambassador was held up by Senator Jim DeMint (R, NC).

Harold Koh was appointed by President Obama to be the Legal Advisor to the Secretary of State. Under President Clinton he had been Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, Democracy, and Labor.

Joan Donoghue, at the time of the cable, was Principle Deputy Legal Advisor at the State Department, having for the six months ending in June 2009 been the acting Legal Advisor. She has served in a number of roles in the State Department since her most recent tenure there began in 2007, including giving advice to the State Department on the development, interpretation and application of international human rights law. She has since been nominated and appointed a judge in the International Court of Justice.

Dan Restrepo, at the National Security Council, was President Obama's senior adviser on Latin American Affairs during the campaign. He was appointed as Senior Director of the Western Hemisphere Affairs council of the National Security Council, the post which he occupied at the time of this cable.

Other addressees include the Western Hemisphere Affairs Central American Committee in the State Department, the White House, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the National Security Council (NSC) and SOUTHCOMM, the Southern Command of the US Military.

The last addressee, however, puzzles me. That addressee is the US Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, at the time just reoccupied by Patrick Duddy. Duddy had been appointed ambassador under President Bush, but was thrown out of Venezuela by Hugo Chavez in September 2008, for alleged complicity in the coup plot against Chavez. He was subsequently re-appointed under the Obama administration and after Obama met with Hugo Chavez in April 2009, was allowed to resume his post in Caracas in July 2009.

Why is the cable addressed to the US Embassy in Venezuela? Wikileaks does not currently have any related traffic from either Honduras or Venezuela, but promises more cables from each country will be posted in coming weeks. Maybe some of that traffic will help clarify the inclusion of this one other embassy in communication about the Honduran coup.

Hugo Llorens Concluded Coup was Utterly Unjustified

------- Comment -------

¶19. (C) The analysis of the Constitution sheds some interesting light on the events of June 28. The Honduran establishment confronted a dilemma: near unanimity among the institutions of the state and the political class that Zelaya had abused his powers in violation of the Constitution, but with some ambiguity what to do about it. Faced with that lack of clarity, the military and/or whoever ordered the coup fell back on what they knew -- the way Honduran presidents were removed in the past: a bogus resignation letter and a one-way ticket to a neighboring country. No matter what the merits of the case against Zelaya, his forced removal by the military was clearly illegal, and Micheletti's ascendance as "interim president" was totally illegitimate.

¶20. (C) Nonetheless, the very Constitutional uncertainty that presented the political class with this dilemma may provide the seeds for a solution. The coup's most ardent legal defenders have been unable to make the intellectual leap from their arguments regarding Zelaya's alleged crimes to how those allegations justified dragging him out of his bed in the night and flying him to Costa Rica. That the Attorney General's office and the Supreme Court now reportedly question the legality of that final step is encouraging and may provide a face-saving "out" for the two opposing sides in the current standoff. End Comment.

These are the last two paragraphs in a cable sent from Tegucigalpa in July, 2009, by US Ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens.

The cable, included among a massive release of documents by Wikileaks, has already been discussed by the Miami Herald. They chose to emphasize the fact that the ambassador reached the conclusion that the coup was "clearly illegal".

That conclusion should come as no surprise to anyone who has actually paid attention to the facts, and tells us more about the ability of the US media to refuse to understand those facts than about the content of the cable or US policy.

Instead, we would emphasize the point by point summary of the arguments of coup supporters and the devastating rejection of those points:

¶3. (SBU) Defenders of the June 28 coup have offered some combination of the following, often ambiguous, arguments to assert it's legality:

-- Zelaya had broken the law (alleged but not proven);

-- Zelaya resigned (a clear fabrication);

-- Zelaya intended to extend his term in office (supposition);

-- Had he been allowed to proceed with his June 28 constitutional reform opinion poll, Zelaya would have dissolved Congress the following day and convened a constituent assembly (supposition);

-- Zelaya had to be removed from the country to prevent a bloodbath;

-- Congress "unanimously" (or in some versions by a 123-5 vote) deposed Zelaya; (after the fact and under the cloak of secrecy); and

-- Zelaya "automatically" ceased to be president the moment he suggested modifying the constitutional prohibition on presidential reelection.

¶4. (C) In our view, none of the above arguments has any substantive validity under the Honduran constitution. Some are outright false. Others are mere supposition or ex-post rationalizations of a patently illegal act. Essentially:

-- the military had no authority to remove Zelaya from the country;

-- Congress has no constitutional authority to remove a Honduran president;

-- Congress and the judiciary removed Zelaya on the basis of a hasty, ad-hoc, extralegal, secret, 48-hour process;

-- the purported "resignation" letter was a fabrication and was not even the basis for Congress's action of June 28; and

-- Zelaya's arrest and forced removal from the country violated multiple constitutional guarantees, including the prohibition on expatriation, presumption of innocence and right to due process.

This reads almost exactly like a summary of the arguments we have made, in this blog and its predecessor, Honduras Coup 2009.

We also like the ambassador's choice of words for paragraphs 11 through 13 of his cable, which he entitled "The Article 239 Canard". As he properly noted, this was only cited post-facto to retroactively claim that President Zelaya had removed himself from office by advocating constitutional reform. The US Embassy cites numerous good reasons for rejecting this entire line of argument.

Most wonderful in this section is the final paragraph:

¶13. (C) It further warrants mention that Micheletti himself should be forced to resign following the logic of the 239 argument, since as President of Congress he considered legislation to have a fourth ballot box ("cuarta urna") at the November elections to seek voter approval for a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution. Any member of Congress who discussed the proposal should also be required to resign, and National Party presidential candidate Pepe Lobo, who endorsed the idea, should be ineligible to hold public office for 10 years.

This is indeed the case; but look who's in the Presidential Palace now, with full US recognition.

Finally, we fully endorse the conclusion in paragraph 18 that the illegal actions of the Honduran Congress did more than remove Zelaya; they were an illegal removal of an entire branch of government by the other two branches, a violation of the very notion of checks and balances:

In the absence of any of these conditions and since Congress lacked the legal authority to remove Zelaya, the actions of June 28 can only be considered a coup d'etat by the legislative branch, with the support of the judicial branch and the military, against the executive branch. It bears mentioning that, whereas the resolution adopted June 28 refers only to Zelaya, its effect was to remove the entire executive branch.

There is every reason to expect more material posted on Wikileaks will be relevant to understanding US policy in Honduras.

The question this July 2009 cable raises is, why was the US so timid in its actions when it had access to such a clear exposition of the issues?

Contextualizing the Roland Valenzuela interview: Congress and Ambassador Llorens, June 22-28, 2009

What are the facts that Roland Valenzuela claimed, in an interview now circulating in Honduras, were established by a dossier of papers left by mistake in a Tegucigalpa hotel?

• that a group of businessmen in Dubai for a trade fair used the opportunity to conspire together;

• that they enlisted a former military attaché as their go between, and set out to enlist key players in their plot;

• that the plotters hired a lobbying firm to help them defame Zelaya (note that the lobbying firm is not said to have been party to the coup plot per se-- they were a tool, not an author);

• that Marcia Villeda faked Zelaya's signature on the "resignation" letter;

• finally, we get to the explosive allegation about Llorens being sent a draft of a decree removing Zelaya from office, signed by a group of individuals who at the time were congress members.

Reading this, I and others have wondered, why would the conspirators have sent a decree to the US ambassador?

I think we can unravel at least this last point.

The reporting on the interview quotes Valenzuela as saying

that the decree sent to the ambassador carried the signature of the congress members Ricardo Rodriguez, Liberal party member and present Sub Procurador of the Republic, Toribio Aguilera Coello, PINU member presently congress member, Rolando Dubon Buezo, Nacional party member and still congressman, Rigoberto Chan Castillo, Nacional party member now secretary of Congress and Gabo Alfredo Jalil Mejia who served as Minister of Defense in the Micheletti regime.

The list of names jogged my memory. On June 26, 2009, Honduran newspapers published stories about the events of the previous evening, which I watched unfold live on television on the north coast. Several of these people were prominent in the television and newspaper coverage.

Rabidly anti-Zelaya La Prensa titled its story that day "They investigate the actions of president Zelaya".

The lead sentence read

While rumors of a disqualification of president Manuel Zelaya Rosales grow like froth, the National Congress maintained steadfast the motion the actions of the leader should be investigated and his administration should be approved or disapproved with urgency.

[Mientras los rumores de una inhabilitación del presidente Manuel Zelaya Rosales crecían como la espuma, el Congreso Nacional mantenía firme la moción para que fueran investigadas las actuaciones del mandatario y de urgencia aprobar o improbar su administración. ]

The reporter for the newspaper repeated that the confrontation over the June 28 cuarta urna survey had motivated "the benches of Congress to lobby for an initiative that would disqualify Zelaya" [Esto motivó a que las bancadas del Congreso cabildearan una iniciativa para inhabilitar a Zelaya].

"Improbar" and "inhabilitar" refer to legal actions congress considered.

The first (equivalent to censure) it did have authority to do. The second, which was apparently the actual step desired by the congressional leadership, ceased to be a power of Congress when the constitution was reformed to remove impunity from prosecution that high officials had enjoyed. Under the present constitution, any high government official accused of crimes is tried by the Supreme Court, and removal from office is one of the possible punishments after a guilty verdict.

Toribio Aguilera is quoted as saying he had not participated in negotiations or dialogues, presumably from the context, about a removal of Zelaya:

"First there should be decreed a state of emergency and if the dialogue is exhausted, proceed to suspension"

[“Primero debería decretarse un estado de emergencia y si se agota el dialogo proceder a la suspensión”.]

"Suspension", presumably of Zelaya as president, was again actually not a power of Congress. Declaring a state of emergency would, of course, become the primary tool of control of the de facto regime.

Aguilera was one member of a committee appointed by congress that also included Emilio Cabrera and Antonio Rivera (in other places, the membership is given as Ricardo Rodríguez, Rigoberto Chang Castillo, Toribio Aguilera, Enrique Rodríguez y Will Bustillo). Rodriguez, Aguilera, and Chang Castillo are three of those who were named by Valenzuela as authors of the document he saw that was intended for Hugo Llorens.

This committee was charged with producing a report on Zelaya's actions and drafting a resolution for Congress to consider. The committee had been interviewed on live television when Congress went into continuous session the previous day, when they stated that they expected to finish their work within hours. On Friday morning, press reports said

they solicited more time to study other documents on which they would solidly base their decision

[solicitaron más tiempo para estudiar otra documentación en la cual fundamentar sólidamente su decisión]

The overlap between the membership of this Congressional committee and the individuals Valenzuela says signed the decree sent to Llorens for comments makes it almost certain that it is the product of this committee that Valenzuela was describing; a decree that would have had congress censuring Zelaya (which it legally could do) but going beyond its constitutional authority to suspend or disqualify him from office.

The article in La Prensa gives a hint of what the congressional strategy to get around this awkward fact was:

Failing to recognize that the Constitution of the Republic gives power to the Legislature to be able to remove a President if he presents an inability to govern, Zelaya said "the Congreso Nacional cannot disqualify me."

[Desconociendo que la Constitución de la República le da poder al Legislativo para que pueda quitar a un Presidente si presenta incapacidad para gobernar, Zelaya dijo: “el Congreso Nacional no puede inhabilitarme.”]

The apparent reference to a president unable to govern is to the part of the constitution aimed at allowing succession in office when a president was incapacitated (for instance, medically).

Marvin Ponce, congress member of the Unificación Democrática (UD) party said after congress approved censure that this was

"an evident demonstration of the interest of Congress in committing a technical coup d'Etat and overthrowing president Zelaya."

"If the National Congress wants to commit a coup d'Etat, say so clearly. I imagine that the commission named by the Junta Directiva [of Congress], that will investigate the President will present a report declaring him disqualified, to then name Micheletti as President of the Republic."

[“una evidente muestra del interés del Congreso de dar un golpe técnico de Estado y derrocar al presidente Zelaya”.

“Si el Congreso Nacional quiere dar un golpe de Estado, que lo diga claramente. Me imagino que la comisión nombrada por la Junta Directiva, que investigará al Presidente dará un informe que lo declarará inhabilitado, para luego nombrar a Micheletti como Presidente de la República”.]

Rigoberto Chang Castillo was quoted as saying

"we do not have intention to commit a coup d'Etat, we do not have the weapons nor the warlike capacity and the Armed Forces are not for that."

[“no tenemos intención de golpe de Estado, no tenemos armas ni capacidad bélica y las FFAA no están para eso.”]

How did Chang Castillo know the position of the Armed Forces on committing a coup on June 26?

Marvin Ponce, speaking on June 26, 2009, ends up sounding eerily prescient:

"Micheletti does not have the popularity in his party nor among the people and in place of calming the situation, we will be entering a series of convulsions that could cause blood to be spilled."

[“Micheletti no tiene la popularidad de su partido ni la del pueblo y en lugar de calmar la situación, estaríamos entrando a una serie de convulsiones que podrían causar derramamiento de sangre”.]

Unfortunately, the Honduran Congress, having started on its route to remove Zelaya, did not stop when it discovered it could not do so legally. The military coup Chang Castillo said could not happen happened. And the outcomes foreseen by Ponce also happened.

What Roland Valenzuela seems to have told us is that the committee of the National Congress charged with preparing a decree to remove Zelaya from office sent a copy of their draft decree to the US Ambassador for his comments. This does not tell us whether Llorens received this document, if he read it, or if he offered comments on it.

Certainly, the interview Llorens gave El Heraldo on June 27, 2009, shows no hint of possible knowledge of the coup that would take place mere hours later. On June 24, Zelaya cabinet minister Patricia Rodas was quoted as saying that she had spoken with Ambassador Llorens and asked him to abstain from interference in the internal affairs of Honduras.

Ambassador Llorens was definitely speaking with Honduran politicians during this week, and those contacts were clearly not just with the Zelaya administration. On the same day that Rodas was interviewed saying she had asked him to abstain from interfering, La Tribuna published an interview with Llorens in which he is quoted as saying

"as a friend of Honduras, I have urged the leaders of the nation to engage in dialogue and that they find a way to resolve their differences on the basis of discussion and the law.'

[“como amigo de Honduras, he instado a los líderes de la nación para que dialoguen y que busquen una forma de arreglar sus diferencias a base del diálogo y las leyes”.]

The implication of his remarks, in which he singled out the congress and Armed Forces as institutions for positive comment, seemed at the time to be giving them backing against the executive branch. Re-reading these remarks now, one can only find his assurance about the Armed Forces bitterly ironic, and his statement that he would not entertain any stories curious:

"I think that the Armed Forces will do what is correct and this will be resolved by the Honduran vocation of doing things with tolerance and within the law, democracy is not exempt from problems, but the reality is that no one is going to come to me with any story, I entered as an agent of diplomacy in the time of the military dictators and totalitarianism."

[“Creo que las Fuerzas Armadas van hacer lo que es correcto y esto se va a resolver por la vocación hondureña de hacer las cosas con la tolerancia y dentro de la ley, la democracia no está exenta de los problemas, pero la realidad es que a mí nadie me va a venir con ningún cuento, yo entré como agente de la diplomacia en la época de las dictaduras militares y el totalitarismo”.]

On June 26, Patricia Rodas worried openly about the power elite contacting Llorens, commenting that while Ambassador Llorens

"abstained from expressing opinions on the internal affairs of our country, we should not forget that powerful groups continue pressuring him so that together they can articulate plans against our country and our people."

["se abstuvo de opinar de los asuntos internos de nuestro país, no olvidemos que lo grupos de poder siguen presionándolo para que juntos puedan articular planes en contra de nuestro país y de nuestro pueblo".]

The implication that powerful groups in Honduras could succeed in enlisting the US Ambassador in their schemes may seem far-fetched from a position outside Honduras. Yet the existence of a draft copy of the decree through which the Honduran Congress intended to remove President Zelaya from office, intended for Ambassador Llorens, indicates a degree of communication between the authors of the coup and the US representative that is giving those suspicious of the role of the US support for their worst doubts.

Honduran suspicions of US complicity in the coup (part two)

The second story posted today stemming from the interview with Roland Valenzuela, now circulating by email and on the internet, cites the mechanism by which Valenzuela said he gained access to papers from the planning of the coup:

The coup d'Etat was planned by Honduran businessmen in an Arab emirate

The assassinated ex minister, Roland Valenzuela, for the ousted president Manuel Zelaya, denounced, on "San Pedro Sula by Night", that the coup d'Etat in Honduras was planned by a group of six Honduran businessmen, who coincided in attending a fair in Dubai, one of the seven Arab emirates.

They met in a bar in a hotel and decided that they had to remove Zelaya: "we cannot bear him any more". Just when the Cuarta Urna started to be pushed, a menace to them, since Zelaya sought a constitutional assembly to convert into law the economic and social measures of his government, in order to protect them.

The "articulator", the coordinator of the coup d'Etat, Jackeline Sandoval, graduated with honors from West Point, and trained afterwards in the US Rangers, forgot a dossier of papers in the Hotel Plaza San Martin, that contained various drafts with precise details of how the Coup would occur.

The dossier was delivered, by "a common citizen who to me is a hero", said Valenzuela, in a recorded copy of the radio program, of almost two hours duration that is circulating on the Internet.

They paid four million dollars to a "powerful lobbyist", someone who promotes political proposals, last name Smith, to misinform about Zelaya through accusations to the Pentagon, the CIA, and the FBI, and to predispose the government of the US. Smith and partners contacted the coordinator of the coup.

Valenzuela commented that those groups, that had sworn an oath to kill Zelaya, would be listening and would say "how does this hayseed [hijuelmaíz] know so much, I don't know if they will kill me right now when I leave [the Radio]", he said, laughing.

The ambassador Hugo Llorens and the US

Among other papers, is the draft of the decree to remove Zelaya, with the number of the Act, dated the 28th of June 2009, signed by Ricardo Rodriguez, José Toribio Aguilera, Rolando Dubón Bueso, Rigoberto Chang Castillo and Gabo Alfredo Jalil Mejía; who address Hugo Llorens, telling him that some corrections are lacking but that "your opinion requires immediate attention".

"what does ambassador Llorens have to do meddling in those matters... giving opinions on a draft that is, nothing less, than the draft of the removal of President Zelaya. This love so great that Llorens had for Zelaya, after not liking him, always called my attention", Valenzuela opined.

He accused the US: "the coup was not reversed because, they betrayed us". Zelaya never was restored because the US assured Micheletti "hold on, hold on, stay there, because we are not going to remove you", he asserted.

"Hillary Clinton swore to Zelaya that they were going to restore him", but at the same time turned over control of the situation to Oscar Arias, who Valenzuela called "the clerk of the gringos".

There is also a communique of the international community, in which "they report that the rule of law was persistently broken" by Zelaya, that "he was attributed, de facto, the supremacy of all the powers of State".

He said that in the sheet, there was a "little list" of the people that were in the meeting, and a set of "untrue accusations" against Zelaya, with observations and corrections that were considered necessary for the proposed plan. Jackeline Sandoval delivered to each person involved which were their tasks and what they should do, or say.

"Call Marcia Villeda so that she obtains those documents" said one of the annotations read by Valenzuela. She "faked the signature" on a supposed resignation of Zelaya and afterwords "they declared her innocent" in a court, he explained.

When Zelaya decided to carry out the Cuarta Urna, the businessmen had a meeting in Dubai and discussed that he wanted the constitutional assembly to convert into law the discounts on fuels. For Valenzuela this had been the motive.

They convince the Armed Forces of Honduras

The conspirators went in search of the Armed Forces, which was the final shield of defense of President Zelaya, that had "remained loyal" to the president, he said.

Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, who was at the time in the Hotel Christopher Columbus in Trujillo, "seemed like a child running from one side to the other showing the plans for the Cuarta Urna to the President", Valenzuela observed. "Suddently, he radically changed his position".

The golpistas acted divided

The only "lying excuse" that they had to kidnap the President was the Cuarta Urna. One golpista group said that there was no way "to touch the president, there are not processes yet, they haven't done what needs to be done, they haven't fulfilled the plan that we made, they are going to reverse the coup", they complained to the other group.

Micheletti persisted and "convinced the Armed Forces, with a perverse connection". Those involved "are the men that command in this country", Rafael Ferrari, media baron, "became ill and went to the US, but left instructions for Renato Alvarez and Edgardo Melgar [journalists] so that they would dedicate themselves to blowing up flowerpots at Mel, and follow the instructions of Billy Joya".

He said that "the golpistas did not follow the scheme that the hawks gave them, the procedure that the American ambassador accepted". Carlos Flores, also golpista, followed the proposal of the US, he was the first to show solidarity with president Zelaya and his wife Xiomara, and to say to him that he "had nothing to do with the coup".

According to Valenzuela those pressing for the coup were "a chuña faction, those that came from below and were desperate to divvy up power".

"The are going to have me killed for this", Roland Valenzuela then said.

He asserted that there is a group of hitman to assassinate Zelaya. That the order in the coup "was to kill him, pretend that the presidential guard resisted, that there was a shoot-out and a shot hit him. But, a man that was opposed" when the elite guard arrived to take away the president, sent 500 soldiers so that "600 eyes would see what happened".

Valenzuela mentioned, in the interview, that he did not go out to march with the Resistance, because he feared that they would kill him in the street, because it fell to him to do "private things, alone" to push for the return and the restitution of Zalaya.

With the Constituyente, Zelaya sought to convert into law the social conquests pushed ahead

Valenzuela mentioned seven measures of the government of Zelaya that produced the discontent and caused the various powerful groups to unite against him.

Among others, the order to lower the prices of the basic shopping cart, the regulation and pressures by the DEI [income tax agency] for the dispensations to fast food franchises, that introduced products like a consumer shop, and sold them in other places.

The measures to adjust the price of fuels, Petro Caribe that provoked the revolt of the transnationals. He told that one of the importers said to the president: "if I stop importation of fuels, president, you will not last even 24 hours more in your position". Valenzuela said that he pushed that businessman, and insulted them.

Zelaya had concluded that the measures achieved in his government could only be protected by "turning them into law", and for that the constitutional assembly was needed, that led him to push for a popular poll, known as the Cuarta Urna. Because, as he said, "in the Congress we have no power. The Court, the Tribunal Superior de Cuentas, 'are owned"".

The role of the Commission of Truth and reconciliation

The "commission of the lie" intends to say that "they committed the coup against president Zelaya because he provoked it", Valenzuela concluded.

Roland Valenzuela, close collaborator and friend of Zelaya, was assassinated by a bullet in the back, by another businessman, Carlos Yacamán Meza, in the bar of a hotel, the 16th of [June] or 2010. The Police initially hid the name of the person that killed him in order not to "hinder the investigations".

Honduran suspicions of US complicity in the coup (part one)

Adrienne Pine on quotha.com provides links to new articles on the website of the Frente de Resistencia, along with audio links and emails circulating that relate to suspicions of US foreknowledge about the coup d'etat of June 28, 2009.

This is the kind of discussion that US commentators routinely reject out of hand as too fantastic to be given any attention.

But in my experience, the Hondurans who are taking these questions seriously are not impressionable: they include a wide range of highly educated people who find it hard to credit that the US was taken entirely by surprise and had no knowledge of the planned coup in time to intervene. This leads to the conclusion that the US did know, and chose to look the other way or even actively endorse the coup.

Concretely, people point to the various meetings Ambassador Hugo Llorens had with parties to the coup in the weeks leading up to June 28. The fact that the plane that illegally carried Manuel Zelaya to Costa Rica landed at Palmerola (Soto Cano) air base, where US forces are stationed, without encountering any reaction, is seen as particularly suspicious.

The current stories come from a new source: ex-Zelaya minister Rolando Valenzuela, who was fatally shot on June 17. The death has been reported as resulting from an argument of a personal nature with Carlos Yacaman, now being sought for the crime.

Shortly before his death, Valenzuela gave an interview to a San Pedro Sula radio station. And that is what has inspired the current return to the nagging question of what Hugo Llorens knew, and when he knew it.

Here are our translations of the first of two articles posted by the FNRP; the second will follow in its own blog post.

Regardless of how likely readers think it is that US officials were part of the planning of the coup, or knew in advance, we would underline that what matters here is that Hondurans in resistance have so much distrust of the US. There is a reason why the US-supplied map to put the coup behind is viewed skeptically: it is called history.

North American ambassador did know about the coup and was part of the conspiracy

The North American ambassador accredited to Tegucigalpa, Hugo Llorens, did know about the coup d'Etat against Manuel Zelaya Rosales, the ex-minister of the Zelaya administration, Roland Valenzuela, revealed days before his death, in an interview broadcast by the journalist Ernesto Alonso Rojas, in a local radio station of the city of San Pedro Sula.

Fifteen days after the assassination of the ex-minister of the National Program of Sustainable Development (PRONADERA), at the hands of the businessman Carlos Yacaman Meza, the interview has circulated on different networks on the Internet, in which he signals in a clear way that the North American ambassador participated directly in the planning of the coup d'Etat and expressed his fear that he could be assassinated for the interview.

The interview, taped the first of May and broadcast by Radio Internacional of San Pedro Sula, regained importance after President Zelaya accused the US of forming part of the coup d'Etat, and Ambassador Llorens appeared denying his participation.

But Valenzuela related in detail how the Ambassador did participate in the coup and how the 10th of June of 2009, the then-president of the National Congress Roberto Micheletti, converted into dictator the 28th of the same month, sent the draft of the decree that would remove Zelaya from office to the North American ambassador to ask his opinion.

According to the story of the ill-fated ex-minister, despite the fact that it was still the 10th of June, the decree carried the date the 28th of June, with the following message for the ambassador, "Ambassador Llorens, this is the decree that Micheletti delivered to me, some opinions are lacking but it requires your immediate opinion."

Valenzuela pointed out as well that the decree sent to the ambassador carried the signature of the congress members Ricardo Rodriguez, Liberal party member and present Sub Procurador of the Republic, Toribio Aguilera Coello, PINU member presently congress member, Rolando Dubon Buezo, Nacional party member and still congressman, Rigoberto Chan Castillo, Nacional party member now secretary of Congress and Gabo Alfredo Jalil Mejia who served as Minister of Defense in the Micheletti regime.

In accord with the interview the person who supposedly sent the decree to the North American ambassador was Jacqueline Foglia Sandoval, a Honduran ex-military, graduate of West Point, who served as attaché of defense in the Honduran embassy in Washington, and as a member of COHEP (Honduran Council of Private Enterprise), among other organizations.

"What did ambassador Llorens have to do walking around, getting involved in the internal affairs of Honduras, giving opinions on a draft document that is the removal of president Zelaya" the ex minister asked in the conversation with the journalist Rojas.

Hillary Clinton promised to restore Zelaya

Valenzuela went further by affirming that the North American Secretary of State promised Zelaya to restore him in power on the first visit that he made to Washington after being overthrown.

"Hillary Clinton on the first visit of president Zelaya swore to president Zelaya that they were going to restore him and afterward they went looking for a position so that the dictatorship could perpetuate itself in power".

Valenzuela affirmed that the restitution of President Zelaya did not happen, "because the gringos betrayed us, because the gringos always betray us... they play a role, saying to us that they are going to aid us and on the other hand they say to Micheletti, hang on, Micheletti, hang on, we aren't going to remove you".

They never restored Zelaya.

Who is Jacqueline Foglia Sandoval

Foglia is singled out by Valenzuela, as the person charged with coordinating and operating the coup d'Etat, "she is the one that coordinated what would be delivered to each one of those that served as executors of the coup, what they should do and say, and what they wanted them to declare", and proposed as an example what she said to the then-Procurador General of the Republic, Rosa América Miranda de Galo.

"Attorney this is the cuarta urna decree, it is published now, you have to declare it illegal".

The 11th of May of 2009, the Court of Administrative Disputes in Tegucigalpa, declared the petition to nullify the survey of the 28th of June presented by the Special Attorney Against Corruption, Henry Salgado, admissable. Three days later the Procuradora General, Rosa América Miranda, cleared it at trial, leaving defenseless the government of President Manuel Zelaya Rosales.

Foglia Sandoval also is singled out in the report "The Facts Speak for Themselves" of the Commissioner of Human Rights, Leo Valladares Lanza, of being part of the battalion 3-16, which in the 1980s was in charge of assassinations and disappearances of Hondurans.

Enjoying the luxury of Dubai the overthrow of Zelaya started

The ill-fated minister revealed how six major businessmen came together at a fair in the city of Dubai, in the bar of a hotel, saying that "Zelaya has to be removed, we cannot support him anymore".

According to the declarations of Valenzuela the conspiracy to remove President Zelaya began in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, in the distant Middle East, immediately after the project of the cuarta urna was announced.

A group of businessmen that were participating in an international fair, who Valenzuela did not identify, decided in that meeting that they were going to remove Zelaya from power and then they articulated and paid a lobbyist in Washington, identified only with the last name of Smith, to begin to discredit the government of Zelaya, a job that cost them four million dollars.

Perhaps Valenzuela was referring to the firm of lobbyists Smith, Dawson and Andrews with its headquarters in Washington.

According to the story, it was in the same reunion that the decided to name Jacqueline Foglia as the coordinator and person in charge of logistics to prepare the overthrow of Zelaya.

Marcia Villeda faked the signature of president Zelaya

In one part of the interview, Valenzuela mentions how the coup d'Etat was planned in congress and in one of the many meetings of the conspiracy, the then and present congress member Marcia Facusse de Villeda was ordered to obtain documents for the accusations against Zelaya.

And about the falsification of president Zelaya, Valenzuela said without subterfuge that it was Marcia Facusse de Villeda who was charged with faking the signature of the president.

In the extensive interview that Valenzuela gave days before his death, he confessed that when Zelaya named him as minister of Pronadera, he knew nothing about agriculture; he criticized the role of the fuel transnationals, the system of administration of justice, as well as the role of personages such as Carlos Flores, who he singled out as involved directly in the coup d'Etat.

Valenzuela will not be able to testify before the Truth Commission because of his assassination in cold blood, in the city of San Pedro Sula, but without knowing his declarations it will be a good contribution to the knowledge of the truth, although now, Valenzuela is dead.

Letter to Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes: Rodolfo Pastor F.

Posted on Quotha:

In the face of the informality of my communication, you might ask-- before reading me-- Who is this? Giving me an excuse for vanity. I write as an historian and as a chronicler of what occurred in my small homeland, Honduras. I could presume on the basis of my curriculum vitae: honorary degrees that have been given me for my professorships or the seat of honor that has been conceded to me in some of the best universities in the world. Or I could boast to you of the high offices that have been entrusted to me, such as president of CERLALC, a decentralized organism of UNESCO, president of the Consejo de Integración Social de Centroamérica, which brings together the ministers charged with social policy. I could weigh my titles of Minister of Culture, Arts and Sports (two times) and coordinating minister of the Social Cabinet of my country in the recently passed administration. But I write as a historian.

I have listened to you today condemn roundly the magnificent reception that some politicians and businessmen gave, in your country, to R. Micheletti, who came to be dictator of Honduras, under whose government and with continued military and police repression, covered up and justified and with the suppression of media of communication of the opposition, there were carried out last November, the elections in which emerged elected the present President Porfirio Lobo. This condemnation of yours is important, given that Micheletti declared that, on the contrary, your government had offered him all security and your minister of governance had hinted at honors of a man of state. (Don't worry since no one believes the liar.) And I am not reaching out because I know that you have those who can inform you better and can confirm the repression before and after those elections, that only malice could describe as "the most free and fair elections in the history of Honduras" as H. Llorens declared.

I understand your celebrated pragmatism, President, and the urgency that you have to turn your back on this problem, in order to get on with your goals of governing for the benefit of the brother people of El Salvador. (My father received his doctorate in that country that he taught me to love, without delusion. Although it has had unjust wars, many times those of us who know this material have commented that it is difficult to encounter two peoples more similar to each other, in culture, religion, language and custom; which should make us more close.) I also understand that you wanted to take advantage of the fact that those elections were carried out within a formal framework to recognize President Lobo, which you have done diligently and amiably, and to procure for him the recognition of others. But when you justly accuse Micheletti of being a dictator, recognize that he committed a coup, and I am not going to presume to teach you that this situation will only be remedied by bringing about peace and forging a new legal order.

Nonetheless, you declare, sir, according to the press of your country: "Now that Honduras has recovered political and social stability, after the presidential triumph of Porfirio Lobo, El Salvador supports its re-entry in the multilateral organizations, that it lost owing to the Coup d'Etat".

Honduras has not recovered any stability, Sir. WOLA itself (Washington Office for Latin America, closely aligned with the State Department) recognized in a press communique today that "political instability and violence against the opposition continues". The golpista members of congress selected the current attorneys and judges. The military and congressmembers who supported the coup continue in power and the same Supreme Court that justified it a posteriori and that finished by granting impunity to their partners. Right there, in El Salvador Micheletti has hinted again, and even though there are those that disbelieve it, Lobo himself has disclosed a conspiracy to overthrow him. In Honduras, they are assassinating journalists at a rate of half a dozen a month and the leaders and relatives of leaders of the opposition every day.

I want to defend this rationale of yours and agree with ex-President Zelaya in the thesis that, if Honduras comes to comply with various difficult conditions, President Lobo will have to be recognized, in order to make firm a route to a future without war, without blood. (I understand you and your companions in arms in the Frente Farabundo Martí know about blood, understand the suffering of war and want us to avoid it.) The continued repression must cease, which will not end, Mr. President, while the present Attorney and the Justices of the Supreme Court that direct the system of justice continue in their positions, who just fired six justices and a magistrate that opposed the coup and while the same military group that committed the coup continues in arms.

When Mrs. Clinton-- with whom you have had a useful friendship-- asks "what are the rest of the countries of the continent waiting for to recognize Pepe Lobo?" the response is simple: they are waiting for him to remove from office the officials who led the coup and the repression and change the attorneys and judges who have given those repressors judicial impunity while they refuse to protect the rights of the Honduran people.

They are not, counted out, many things; nor are they easy to obtain. But only if we achieve a unified voice of the international community can there prevail in peace the good intention to convene a Constituyente that will bring us peace. For this end, Mr. Lobo will need the recognition of the Resistance, that only the FNRP can give, that today recognizes the leadership of ex President Zelaya. It may appear paradoxical, but the worst that you could do for President Lobo is award him the unrestricted and unconditional support that Doña Hillary asks, because that will put him in the hands of the same golpistas that, in a show similar to that which you witnessed, pass here boasting that, if he does not respect their bizarre interpretation of the constitution that they throw in the trash, they will also commit a coup against him. For the Señora it will be difficult to understand. But perhaps you do not see the danger for your country in the instability of ours? I am sure you have studied history.

Tentative agreement reached in Bajo Aguan

Late today Honduran news media began reporting that an agreement has been reached between MUCA and the government of Porfirio Lobo Sosa.

El Tiempo's coverage says that Lobo Sosa and the leaders of MUCA signed an agreement after a marathon 14 hour negotiating session. It describes MUCA as accepting the government offer. But the conditions are markedly different than the offer the government was making yesterday.

The proposal "the slow adjudication of some 11,000 hectares of land for the 28 campesino groups". That comes out to a little more than 3 hectares per family. Of this, 3,000 hectares are to be planted in African palm, and another 3,000 not cultivated.

Within a year of signing, an additional 1,000 hectares of African palm land, and an additional 4,000 hectares of uncultivated land, are to be added.

The first step is to be the designation by the government of the first 3,000 hectares in African palm, followed by MUCA leaving the rest of the occupied land. Within three months, the first allotment of 3,000 hectares of uncultivated land is to be made.

The agreement still needs to be ratified by the membership of MUCA, something scheduled for Saturday in Trujillo, the largest city near the Bajo Aguan.

While Tiempo limits itself to covering the main points of the agreement without editorializing, La Tribuna titles its article "Agreement will bring peace to the Aguan". This is taken from comments made by Lobo Sosa, after an event with US Ambassador Hugo Llorens.

An AP story by Freddy Cuevas appears to be the first English-language reporting on the tentative agreement. He adds one important detail:

The workers are demanding that the troops withdraw, but the government has made no decision on that.

Meanwhile, early Spanish-language coverage suggests the agreement be viewed as a success by the campesinos. Writing on Publico.es of Spain, Daniel Lozano reports that "Honduras yields before the pressure of the rebel countryside". Not only does Lozano count the land grant as a success, he says that Lobo Sosa agreed to redeploy the troops sent to the region, deployment Lobo Sosa has tried to portray as unrelated to the Aguan negotiations. And he is much more explicit about the agreement being subject to ratification, quoting MUCA representative Rudy Hernández:

"We recognize that more land has been granted to us, but we are going to the membership to deliver them this agreement".

The complete agreement can be downloaded as a PDF embedded in the story published by Honduras La Prensa. We will be posting an English translation within 24 hours.