Last week former President Zelaya of Honduras signed an agreement with the interim government of Roberto Micheletti that cleared the way for ending the constitutional crisis in that Central American country. Key to the agreement was a provision leaving it up to the Congress to vote on Mr. Zelaya’s possible restoration to office. Yesterday, the State Department’s official spokesman reiterated, ‘This is a Honduran problem that will have a Honduran solution.” The Administration must continue to adhere to this position and not backtrack. It needs to move swiftly to restore …
The Obama Administration ironically recognized the legitimacy of Iran’s thuggish Islamist regime only a few months before the Iranian people renounced its legitimacy in a spontaneous popular backlash against the stolen June elections.This has led to considerable confusion and growing bitterness within Iran’s embattled opposition movement. As the Wall Street Journal has noted, the Iranian protesters who chanted “O ba ma!” (“He with us” in Farsi) in demonstrations against the Ahmadinejad regime last summer, now are chanting, “Obama, Obama—either you’re with them or with us.” The courageous Iranians risking their …
The White House and the State Department are finally doing what they should have done long ago: putting a high-level delegation on the ground on Honduras and talking to all parties including the interim government of Roberto Micheletti. The U.S. hopes to end the political crisis that began on June 28 when President Manuel Zelaya was removed from the presidency for gross violations of the Honduran constitution and for aspiring to extend the term of his presidency. For months the Obama Administration dodged leadership responsibility and handed the problem off …
The Obama Administration’s policy refuses to recognize the way out of the Honduran crisis. The door is open and a solution beckons: national elections on November 29. Yet, the Administration remains fixated on restoring former president Manuel Zelaya to power. In fine bureaucratic fashion, it has lost sight of the solution in order to support an uncertain process of negotiations. Instead of allowing the Honduran people to speak through elections on November 29 and end the crisis, the Administration makes Zelaya’s restoration to presidential office its primary objective and the …
When “good” President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and the “bad” President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez came to New York, both wooed the media. Newsweek declared Lula to be “the most popular politician on earth.” Chavez didn’t call Obama “the devil” and went mano a mano with Larry King. Lula’s Brazil is a continent of a country on the rise with a multi-party democracy; Chavez’s Venezuela sits on ocean of oil that fuels his one-party democracy. Both leaders aim for more clout on the global stage In the …
