The head of the Honduran military has pledged not to use deadly force against supporters of toppled president Manuel Zelaya after the army gave its backing to mediation efforts.
“We will not fire on our people,” the armed forces commander, General Romeo Vasquez, told Radio Globo, one of the few Honduras media outlets critical of the interim government headed by Robert Micheletti.
Vasquez was a key figure in the June 28 ouster of Zelaya and has defended the expulsion, but has said he was only enforcing a Supreme Court ruling.
Zelaya is now camped out on the Nicaraguan side of the border with Honduras from where he is plotting his return.
On Sunday Zelaya complained that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had stopped using the term “coup” to describe his removal.
“The position of the Secretary Clinton at the beginning was firm. Now I feel that she’s not really denouncing [it] and she’s not acting firmly against the repression that Honduras is suffering,” he told reporters.
In comments carried live on Radio Globo, Zelaya urged mid-level military officers to mutiny against their generals, who he said had betrayed Honduras for money.
“As commander in chief of the armed forces, I ask patriotic soldiers to think of their children, think of their families and to rebel against Romeo Vazquez,” Zelaya said.
BACK IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: The planned transit by the ‘Baden-Wuerttemberg’ and the ‘Frankfurt am Main’ would be the German Navy’s first passage since 2002 Two German warships are set to pass through the Taiwan Strait in the middle of this month, becoming the first German naval vessels to do so in 22 years, Der Spiegel reported on Saturday. Reuters last month reported that the warships, the frigate Baden-Wuerttemberg and the replenishment ship Frankfurt am Main, were awaiting orders from Berlin to sail the Strait, prompting a rebuke to Germany from Beijing. Der Spiegel cited unspecified sources as saying Beijing would not be formally notified of the German ships’ passage to emphasize that Berlin views the trip as normal. The German Federal Ministry of Defense declined to comment. While
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The US House of Representatives yesterday unanimously passed the Taiwan Conflict Deterrence Act, which aims to disincentivize Chinese aggression toward Taiwan by cutting Chinese leaders and their family members off from the US financial system if Beijing acts against Taiwan. The bipartisan bill, which would also publish the assets of top Chinese leaders, was cosponsored by Republican US Representative French Hill, Democratic US Representative Brad Sherman and seven others. If the US president determines that a threat against Taiwan exists, the bill would require the US Department of the Treasury to report to Congress on funds held by certain members of the
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