Costa Rica promised to restore ties with Honduras after it elects a new president today, joining other countries in rejecting ousted president Manuel Zelaya’s insistence that recognizing the vote would legitimize a June coup.
The front-runner in the elections, Porfirio Lobo, welcomed the decision by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, saying in an interview on Friday that he expected other Latin American countries gradually to follow suit.
“Some who are saying today they won’t recognize the vote have told me they will recognize the elections,” he said.
Lobo also promised that if he wins, he would include Zelaya in a national reconciliation talks and suggested that the ousted leader would be able to leave his refuge inside the Brazilian embassy without fear of arrest. Zelaya has been holed up there since sneaking back into the country in September.
“They have to get him out. If not, how?” said Lobo, who declined to answer whether he would grant Zelaya a pardon on abuse of power and other charges.
“What I know is that if we want peace for Honduras, we have to bring him into the dialogue,” he said.
Arias’ decision to acknowledge the next administration is a new setback for Zelaya, who is urging the international community not to recognize the vote.
Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, was a chief mediator in largely unsuccessful negotiations to restore Zelaya to power. He now says the world should not punish the next Honduran government for the coup.
“Why should we punish them with a second Hurricane Mitch by not recognizing the next government, isolating it, denying it cooperation?” Arias said in an interview aired on CNN en Espanol on Friday. The 1998 hurricane killed thousands in Honduras.
Western Hemisphere countries, once united in condemning the June 28 coup, are divided on recognizing the results of the elections, which were scheduled long before Zelaya’s ouster.
Left-led countries, including Brazil and Argentina, argue recognizing the vote is tantamount to whitewashing the coup.
Washington has said it will support the election.
Beijing yesterday dismissed as “groundless speculation” a report that said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) was the target of a Chinese spy plot. The article by the New York Times, published on Thursday, said that US intelligence officials concluded that a Chinese executive linked to a Singapore-based data center company had been funneling information to Beijing. “The report in question is based on groundless speculation and is nothing more than an attempt to smear China,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Guo Jiakun (郭嘉昆) told a regular briefing. China is in a race for tech dominance with the US, which restricts the export
Long dubbed an “air-conditioned nation,” Singapore is experimenting with cooling alternatives from chilled beams to “passive displacement” to curb its thirst for energy-guzzling air-conditioning. The city-state has the highest per-capita air-conditioner ownership rate in Southeast Asia, with about 99 percent of private residences equipped with cooling units. Singapore’s local building sector accounts for one-fifth of its emissions, while cooling itself accounts for 40 to 60 percent of a building’s energy consumption, according to studies. A stroll down Orchard Road highlights that dependence. Shoppers are greeted by blasts of cool air that waft into the street as doors swing open — a major draw
KIRIBATI: Nine people on a skiff had been reported missing after they failed to return to Ruo Island in Micronesia on July 30. Four people remained missing Five people, including two children, were rescued this week in the South Pacific island nation of Kiribati after three months drifting at sea in a 20-foot (6m) skiff, authorities said. Another four remained missing. Villagers rescued the group on Sunday off Fanning Island in Kiribati, the Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) reported, after they had drifted an estimated 5,400km east from the Federated States of Micronesia. The US Coast Guard in Guam yesterday confirmed that the skiff with nine people aboard had been reported missing after it failed to return to Ruo Island in Micronesia on July 30. 10-DAY SEARCH A 10-day search covering
33 MISSING: The unprecedented number of empty seats at the fifth plenum, an annual gathering of top officials, serve as a symbol of the extent of the purges under Xi Jinping China expelled a record number of officials from the Chinese Communist party (CCP) as it concluded a major political gathering, which saw an unprecedented number of empty seats indicating the scale of the purges under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). A record 33 members were expelled at this week’s fifth plenum, a gathering of top officials that takes place roughly once a year. Just 279 of the full and alternate members of the CCP’s Central Committee attended this week’s gathering, compared with the 376 originally named as members in 2022. That means that more than 25 percent of the original cohort were
RSS