HONDURAS UPDATE AUG 6 2009

By Emile Schepers

There is not much that is really new today. In Honduras, the struggle goes on in the streets. The Micheletti coup regime has said that the group of foreign ministers organized at the initiative of OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza can come to Tegucigalpa but it can not include foreign ministers of any of the ALBA countries (Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Antigua and Barbuda and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. I do not have info on how Dr. Insulza has reacted to that, if he has as yet.

On Aug 9-10 there will be a summit of the leaders of the NAFTA countries in Guadalajara, Mexico: Mexican President Felipe Calderon, U.S. President Barack Obama, and Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper. The main purpose of the meeting is to discuss trade and related matters, but the issue of Honduras is likely to come up. Though Calderon has made a strong statement on Honduras, Harper has been one of the weakest, related either to his ultra-right ideology or perhaps heavy Canadian investment in the Honduran mining sector. There will be demonstrations.

There is no progress on getting more co-sponsors onto H RES 630, which denounces the coup and calls for Zelaya’s restoration. It is stuck at 44 cosponsors, while the opposing resolution, H RES 619, which applauds the coup and calls for Zelaya’s restoration, is at 41. The problem on 630 is that almost every cosponsor is a member of the Progressive, Hispanic or Black caucuses, which don’t form a majority in the House of Representatives by a long shot. We have to start getting others on board. I wrote to both my senators asking them to support restoration of Zelaya. I got back a response from one of them (Jim Webb, D-VA) which is so “balanced” in its language one can absolutely not tell what side of the issue he would come down on if there were some sort of Senate vote. It was a form letter of course. I have not received a response from my other senator, Mark Warner. This suggests to me that the lobbying work on Capitol Hill which is being paid for by the coup regime and its Honduran and US business backers is really having an effect. We have only our energy to oppose to this, so let’s get cracking.

To see the list of who is on the two resolutions, go to www.thomas.loc.gov and type in “Honduras” in the search engine.