Zelaya: US-brokered Honduras Deal 'dead'

Sara Miller Llana
The Christian Science Monitor
November 5, 2009

Despite a US-brokered deal to end the four-month-old political crisis in Honduras, which was hailed as a major breakthrough last week, it appears that effort has unraveled at the seams.

"The accord is dead," said ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who was arrested and deposed June 28, on the local radio station Radio Globo. "There is no sense in deceiving Hondurans."

Under the terms of the agreement, the Honduran Congress would vote whether to reinstate the country's ousted president, and in turn the US would accept the results of the nation's Nov. 29 presidential election. Honduras was also to announce the creation of a unity government by midnight Thursday, to hold power until a new president takes over in January. Roberto Micheletti, who took over as interim president hours after Mr. Zelaya was arrested, did just that, but without the collaboration of Zelaya. The ousted president has protested the process since the nation's Congress has not moved forward on the reinstatement decision...

"...Clearly this issue has not been resolved. There is no real deal," says Christopher Sabatini, the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly in New York, who says the US, which had at first lined up on the same side as governments around the region, might find themselves isolated. "They are now, in fact, part of the problem. I think they may have put themselves in a bigger pickle than if they hadn't" taken a diplomatic role, he said.

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