29 October 2009
Honduran Negotiators Only Need Political Will to Reach Agreement
Washington — U.S. officials sent to help facilitate negotiations between the de facto government of Honduras and President Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted in a June 28 coup, have been asked to remain as the two sides try to come to an agreement that would help legitimize the country’s planned November 29 presidential election.
Speaking to reporters in Washington October 29 via teleconference from Tegucigalpa, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Tom Shannon said an agreement is necessary to win broad international support for the election.
“From our point of view, an agreement within the national dialogue opens a large space for members of the international community to assist Honduras in this election process, to observe the elections and to have a process that is peaceful and which produces a leadership that is widely recognized throughout the hemisphere as legitimate,” he said.
Having a recognized government in power will also help Honduras “reintegrate itself into the inter-American community,” not only with the Organization of American States (OAS), “but also the Inter-American Development Bank and its other institutions and to access development funding through the international financial institutions,” Shannon said.
The United States believes a political deal is already on the table between the two sides, with the question of Zelaya’s restitution as the remaining outstanding issue.
“This is not really a question of drafting or of shaping a paragraph. It’s really a question of political will,” Shannon said.
Shannon, along with Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Craig Kelly and White House Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs Dan Restrepo, arrived in Tegucigalpa October 28 to try to help the two sides overcome the stalemate. (See “Clinton Sends U.S. Officials to Honduras to Urge End to Crisis.”)
Shannon said the U.S. delegation has “decided to stay longer because we’ve been asked to stay by different groups participating in this negotiation,” adding his hope that, with the election only 30 days away, “an agreement will emerge soon.”
In their negotiations, the United States wants Honduras’ leaders to “respect the democratic vocation of the Honduran people and the democratic aspirations of the Honduran people and the desire of Honduras to return to a larger democratic community in the Americas.”
At the same time, Shannon said, the solution to the political crisis must and will be done by the Hondurans themselves. “In this process, the question really isn’t what we would accept. The question is what the Hondurans can negotiate among themselves and what Hondurans are prepared to accept.”
“What the Hondurans can determine and decide among themselves, we’ll accept,” he said, adding that inter-American and international support behind the solution will help to make it “more enduring and more peaceful.”
PRESIDENTIAL CONTENDERS AGREE
Shannon said he and the other members of the U.S. delegation met October 28 with Honduran presidential candidates who represent “a broad political spectrum” of the electorate.
“What was striking about last night’s meeting … is that, in spite of that spectrum, they were all agreed that an agreement within the national dialogue was absolutely essential to the ability of the elections on November 29th to go forward in a peaceful and productive fashion,” he said.
All of the candidates also recognize that the next Honduran president will face enormous challenges and will benefit from having “broad support across Honduran society, broad recognition of legitimacy and broad support from the international community.”
The June 28 coup that ousted the president was “the product not of just a particular series of events but of a larger and more fundamental problem inside Honduran society,” and the country’s next government will need to address it by beginning “a profound or national dialogue … that will allow Honduras to strengthen its democracy, strengthen its institutions and emerge in a much stronger position than when it began,” he said.
At the United Nations, U.S. Deputy Permanent Representative Alejandro Wolff said October 28 that “free, fair, and transparent elections … would be a key step” toward a solution that both the Honduran people and the international community could accept as legitimate.
The presidential candidates had all been chosen before events in Honduras led to the June 28 coup and did not participate in it, Wolff said. They “have earned their positions thanks to the trust of … Honduran voters.”
