U.S. Policy on Honduras Puts Latin Ties at Risk, Brazilian Says

By REUTERS

Published: November 25, 2009by The New York Times

BRASÍLIA (Reuters) — The United States risks souring relations with much of Latin America if it recognizes a presidential election in Honduras on Sunday, the foreign policy adviser to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil said in an interview on Wednesday.

The de facto leader of Honduras, Roberto Micheletti, has said he hopes the election will end a political crisis that began when soldiers placed President Manuel Zelaya on an airplane and sent him into exile on June 28.

The United States, which condemned the coup, has not announced an official position on the election, but American officials have implied that the Obama administration will support the outcome, saying that recognition of the presidential election was not contingent on Mr. Zelaya’s reinstatement.

“The United States will become isolated — that is very bad for the United States and its relationship with Latin America,” the Brazilian foreign policy adviser, Marco Aurélio Garcia, said after he had spoken on the telephone to the White House national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones.

Mr. Garcia said that “very important countries — the majority in terms of population and political weight — won’t recognize” the results of the election.

Neither Mr. Micheletti nor Mr. Zelaya, who has been living in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, the capital, since sneaking back into Honduras in September, is running for president.

Much of Latin America had hoped that President Obama would herald a new era in Latin American diplomacy, after eight years of the unpopular Bush administration and decades of perceived meddling by Washington.

“It would be good if that expectation were not frustrated,” Mr. Garcia said he had told General Jones.

Mr. Garcia and other Latin American diplomats contend that recognizing the election will essentially legitimize a coup in a region that has been consolidating its democracies.

He and others say that conditions for free elections do not now exist in Honduras.

“The election has the fingerprints of a coup,” Mr. Garcia said. To accept the results of the election, he added, would encourage “another country to adopt the same solution — ‘We don’t like this president; let’s topple him.’ ”

Mr. Garcia, who said that Mr. da Silva shared his views, explained his concerns to General Jones in what he described as a friendly conversation.

“General Jones thanked me and said he would discuss it with his colleagues in the White House,” he said.

Mr. Garcia insisted that Brazil, which has been seeking a growing leadership role in the region and beyond, was not trying to challenge the United States. “This is what you do between friends — you say, ‘Hey, that’s not O.K.,’” he said.

But if Washington insists on recognizing the election, several countries will respond by seeking countermeasures in the Organization of American States, Mr. Garcia said.

“The O.A.S. itself would deal with that and I already heard from some members that Honduras could be excluded from the O.A.S.,” he added.