State Dept. Will No Longer Threaten Sanctions On Honduras

Perhaps the State Dept has seen the error of its ways?

Diplomacy: In a quiet victory for a tiny democracy, U.S. buttinskies have stopped trying to restore a dictator to power in South America. Tiny Honduras is winning its fight for freedom.

In a welcome about-face, the State Department told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Richard Lugar, R-Ind., in a letter Tuesday that the U.S. would no longer threaten sanctions on Honduras for ousting its president, Mel Zelaya, last June 28.

That letter was undoubtedly in response to Senator Lugar’s letter to SOS Clinton about a week and a half ago:

…he also appealed to the State Department to provide a detailed clarification of U.S. policy to “interested Members” – an apparent reference to several of his fellow Republicans, who charge Washington is trying to reinstate a left-wing government in Honduras.

Because of U.S. support for Zelaya, conservative Republican Senator Jim DeMint has threatened to delay a Senate vote on the nomination of Arturo Valenzuela to be assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, the senior diplomat in charge of Latin America at the State Department.

“I request that the Department provide interested Members a detailed clarification of the steps that it has taken, and intends to take, in response to the events that transpired in the run-up to and period after the forced removal of President Manuel Zelaya from Honduras,” Lugar wrote to Clinton.

The State Dept will no longer insist that Zelaya be returned to power:

As it turns out, the U.S. Senate can’t find any legal reason why the Honduran Supreme Court’s refusal to let Zelaya stay in office beyond the time allowed by Honduran law constitutes a “military coup.”

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