Thousands of supporters and opponents of Manuel Zelaya have staged rival demonstrations as the ousted Honduran president held talks in Washington to rally support for his return to power.
The interim Honduran regime has been resisting domestic and foreign pressure to reinstate Zelaya since soldiers kicked him out of the country in his pajamas on June 28.
Zelaya arrived in Washington on Saturday and met with the top US official for Latin America, Thomas Shannon, and Organization of American States Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza, said Rodolfo Pastor, a senior embassy official loyal to Zelaya.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The meeting “is part of the ongoing negotiations” for Zelaya to return to Honduras, Pastor said.
The US has suspended military ties with Tegucigalpa and warned it could sever US$200 million in aid. The World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank have frozen credit lines for the country.
The coup “is nothing but a barbaric step backward that affects all Latin American countries and even the United States,” Zelaya said in the Dominican Republic, before flying to Washington. “No one will go unpunished in the de facto government.”
The beleaguered leader continues to call for his return to power, even though his demand went nowhere in talks launched on Thursday in Costa Rica with the interim government.
Talks between representatives of Zelaya and interim Honduran leader Roberto Micheletti ended late on Friday with no breakthrough.
Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner who brokered the meetings, said that talks would resume soon.
Meanwhile, Zelaya’s supporters in Tegucigalpa grew more anxious, worried that the interim government was seeking to “buy time,” said Marvin Ponce, a lawmaker with the leftist Democratic Unification Party.
“We are not trying to buy time, but rather to obtain a result,” countered Carlos Lopez, who heads Micheletti’s team of negotiators.
In a bid to increase pressure on the interim leaders, Zelaya supporters renewed their blockades of roads and bridges. They also marched to the airport to pay tribute to a youth killed on July 5, when Zelaya aborted an attempt to return.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS