Obama Strikes Tougher Tone on Honduran Coup, Calls it 'Terrible Precedent' For Region

WASHINGTON, Jun 29 (IPS) -- Capping a day of mixed signals, U.S. President Barack Obama said late Monday that he considered Sunday's ouster and exile of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya to be "not legal" and that Washington still considered him the legitimate president of the Central American country.

Speaking at a very brief press appearance with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, Obama referred to Sunday's events as a "coup" and warned that, if permitted to stand, it would constitute a "terrible precedent" for the region.

"President Zelaya was democratically elected, he had not yet completed his term," he said. "We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the President of Honduras, the democratically elected president there."

Obama spokes several hours after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had explicitly declined to label Sunday's developments a "coup" or demand that Zelaya be reported to his position as president. She stressed that State Department lawyers were still reviewing the situation to determine whether Zelaya's ouster constituted the kind of action that would require a suspension of U.S. assistance.

Under U.S. law, no aid can be disbursed to any country "whose elected head of government has been deposed by military coup or decree."

"We are withholding any formal legal determination," Clinton told a press briefing here.

Asked whether Washington is demanding Zelaya's restoration, Clinton said: "We haven't laid out any demands that we're insisting on, because we're working with others on behalf of our ultimate objectives."

Her remarks marked a striking contrast to those of the secretary-general of the Organization of American States (OAS), Jose Miguel Insulza, who, at a press conference here at OAS headquarters with Salvadorean President Mauricio Funes, declared that Zelaya's re-instatement as president was a pre-condition for any successful resolution of the two-day-old crisis.

The OAS, he said, will only be open to dialogue "if it contemplates the return of President Zelaya to his legitimate position."

Insulza, who will chair a special emergency meeting of OAS foreign ministers on the situation here Tuesday, also invoked Article 19 of the Inter-American Democratic Charter which effectively suspends any member country from taking part in official OAS business if there is an unconstitutional interruption of its democratic order.

He said the situation required that the de facto authorities in Tegucigalpa suffer "international isolation" until the legitimate government is restored.

The contrast between Clinton's remarks and those of Insulza's suggested for the first time that at least a temporary gap has opened between the United States and most, if not all, of Latin America as to how they should react to the crisis in Honduras, whose Congress Sunday elected Roberto Micheletti as the new president after the military detained and expelled Zelaya to Costa Rica.

But Obama's remarks late in the afternoon -- particularly those about Zelaya's official status -- appear to have closed that gap.

"I think it would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition, rather than democratic elections," Obama said.

"The region has made enormous progress over the past 20 years in establishing democratic traditions in Central America and Latin America. We don't want to go back to a dark past. We always want to stand with democracy," he said.

Obama's remarks very much echoed Insulza's statement earlier in the day. Noting the OAS Permanent Assembly's condemnation of the moves against Zelaya late Sunday, the former Chilean former minister said the Council had "distance(d) the organisation from dark periods in the history of our continent".