Politics

While post-ouster Toll hits Five people dead, Honduran General General Romeo Vasquez, denies Coup, and pressure from the United Nations, the OAS, Central American presidents, increases. In an interview with CNN, President Zelaya said that with a tighter pressure from the United States, the coup could no be maintained any longer.

After two Zelaya supporters died in Honduras, ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya vowed on Saturday to return to power through peaceful means and said he would take his case to the International Criminal Court. He declared that it was in the convenience of the United States to withhold a common vision of democracy, and not support the coup d’état.

Avaaz.org, a community made up of three million citizens, is calling on all residents of Latin America to sign a declaration which is to be sent to the negotiating table for the political conflict in Honduras. A formal request will be submitted to Oscar Arias, president of Costa Rica, “[in order for] the parties involved to be aware that the people of Latin America will only accept a political resolution based on democratic principles”.

On Thursday morning the process will start to build a platform for dialogue between Zelaya and Micheletti at the home of Costa Rica President, Oscar Arias Sanchez.

Ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya is in Washington today for meetings with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. It’s Zelaya’s highest-level meeting with a U.S. official since his overthrow last month.

US President, Barack Obama and Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, yesterday signed terms of an agreement to reduce strategic nuclear weapons by a third, despite differences over US plans to install an anti-missile shield in Europe. The Russian president proposed the creation of an anti-missile shield capable of protecting all countries worldwide.

Barack Obama is getting ready for his first trip to Moscow that will last from Monday 6th of July to Wednesday 9th. This is a re-start of a new area in the relations between Russia and the USA. Depending on those meetings is the future of the bilateral nuclear programme of disarmament and the anti missile shield affair (NMD) that the USA plans to build in Central Europe.

In this Summit a new treaty will be prepared in order to reduce the nuclear strategic arsenal of both countries, to replace the START-1 treaty that will expire on December 5th 2009.

Honduras is facing growing regional and international pressure to restore the overthrown President Manuel Zelaya. Earlier today, the thirty-five-member Organization of American States said it would suspend Honduras unless Zelaya is returned to office within three days. The ultimatum follows Tuesday’s unanimous decision by the UN General Assembly to condemn the coup. Addressing the UN, Zelaya stuck by his vow to return to Honduras on Thursday despite threats of arrest.

President Obama: “President Zelaya was democratically elected. He had not yet completed his term. We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there. In that, we have joined all the countries in the region, including Colombia and the Organization of American States. I think it would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition, rather than democratic elections.”

This morning, representatives of social and political organisations – the Patriotic Committee of Paso Ancho, the Bolivarian Circle Yamileth Lopez, the Humanist Party, a few media such as Reuters and Pressenza, as well as citizens conscious of the importance of solidarity with the Honduran people – came to the Embassy to talk with functionaries and express their rejection of the coup d’etat in the neighbouring country.