Military in Honduras Backs Plan on Zelaya

NEW YORK TIMES

Military in Honduras Backs Plan on Zelaya

By GINGER THOMPSON and BLAKE SCHMIDT

July 26, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Honduran armed forces issued a communiqué on Saturday indicating that they would not stand in the way of an agreement to return Manuel Zelaya, the country’s ousted president, to power.

Meanwhile, in Las Manos, a town along the border between Nicaragua and Honduras, Mr. Zelaya made his second symbolic appearance in two days, defying calls from foreign leaders to avoid any moves that might provoke violence in his politically polarized country.

The communiqué was drafted in Washington after days of talks between mid-level Honduran officers and American Congressional aides. Posted on the Honduran Armed Forces Web site, it endorsed the so-called San José Accord that was forged in Costa Rica by delegates representing President Zelaya and the man who heads the de facto Honduran government, Roberto Micheletti.

The accord, supported by most governments in the hemisphere, would allow Mr. Zelaya to return as president, although with significantly limited executive powers. Mr. Micheletti has steadfastly rejected Mr. Zelaya’s return as president.

In its communiqué, the Honduran military added its support to the proposal. Officials involved said it was meant to dispel any perceptions that the military would block civilian efforts to resolve the crisis.

The officials said the military communiqué was significant because it was the first sign of support for the San José Accord by a powerful sector of the de facto government. And the officials said it could make it more difficult for the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court to reject the accord when they consider it.

American officials who met here with the Hondurans said that they were two colonels who were concerned about the tensions generated by the political conflict.

Joy Olson, executive director of the Washington Office on Latin America, a nonprofit human rights group, said she was told that the officers were showing Congressional aides a recording of the day Mr. Zelaya was detained, as evidence that no abuses had been committed against him.

In the meantime, however, thousands of troops had been deployed to tighten security along the border to prevent Mr. Zelaya from returning. And thousands of his supporters defied government curfews and military roadblocks, by abandoning their cars and hiking for hours to reach the remote border post to see him.

Mr. Zelaya vowed to try a third time to re-enter Honduras. "We are ready to take this to its final consequences," he told his supporters. "We are not afraid.”

Ginger Thompson reported from Washington, and Blake Schmidt from Las Manos, Nicaragua