"Conversations in Washington by the Representative of Zelaya, Rodolfo Pastor F."

Vos el Soberano today posted a press release under the above title that reads as follows:

The Secretary General of the OAS, Jose Insulza, having solicited that he send his representative to talk with the OAS High Level Commission formed by the past Assembly of the organization to analyze the problem generated in Honduras by the coup d'Etat of 28-06-09, the ex-President Manuel Zelaya R. ordered me to present myself in Washington. There I attended two meetings between July 5 and 8, one meeting with the Commission as a whole and the other with the Juridical Commission of advisors, that had previously visited Honduras.

I explained our position in the meeting with the Commission of ambassadors, which is the same as the declarations of the OAS and of the authorities of almost all the governments represented in it, which is that, in Honduras on the 28th of June of 2009, there was produced a coup d'etat, underlining that, in it, there had participated in coordination the military, the Congress of that time (which accepted a falsified resignation before naming its president as Head of State), and the present Supreme Court that, in the days following the coup, generated a series of exculpatory documents for the military and a political persecution with a series of accusations against President Zelaya and against various cabinet ministers. We argued that for the present government to be able to be recognized in the assembly as the legitimate representative of our country, it would have to fulfill the demands subscribed to in the proposal of the OAS, and sustained in its democratic charter, otherwise leaving this crime unpunished as a disastrous precedent and abdication of the principles of the organization.

The conversations with Secretary Insulza coincided in

1. Arranging for the end of the judicial prosecution of ex-President Zelaya and his collaborators.

2. Commiting the present government to strengthen the Human Rights Prosecutor.

3. Proposing international accompaniment in the fight against impunity.

4. Enlargening the Truth Commission formed by the government, with a representative to be proposed by the opposition; and

5. Convening a broad National Dialogue, with genuine representation of the opposition and with an open agenda to study the right to the Constitutional Assembly process.

Secretary Insulza informed me without details that President Lobo had sent his own representative but he didn't accept that agreed to [above]. That they were additionally accusing the ex-President, of a payment for publicity and for the investment to finance the logistics of the poll about the Cuarta Urna, which had been indispensable in view of the fact that the military did not return the money they were given for that purpose, when they rebelled two days before the Coup. That is to say that the present government, elected without opposition, under a State of Emergency and without the observation of the OAS nor any official international organization demands that ex-President Zelaya should submit himself, for these accusations, to the justice of the perpetrators and sponsors of the coup that was carried out against him. That they would give him the grace to permit himself to defend himself outside the jail. Secretary Insulza did not explain what would be the proposal for international accompaniment for the struggle against the impunity that the Coup participants enjoy and explained that President Lobo wished that it would be the official Truth Commission itself that would incorporate a representative of the opposition.

It was expressed to the Secretary and the Commission our agreement that, by different procedures, the same end could be arrived at and that what worried us, above all, was the state of defenselessness of Hondurans against the everyday violations and crimes against humanity, certified by its own Commission on Human Rights, about which they were not ruling given that-- due to the complicity of the Public Prosecutor and the judiciary in the coup-- the conditions to put a brake on these abuses or deduce responsibilities did not exist. But he was reminded that the agreement was the end of persecution.

The jurists that have studied the accusations assured us that they have progressed in the discussion with the Prosecutor and the Court in Honduras, but they repeated that, for formality's sake, the President would have to present himself before this judiciary, to ask that it grant him amnesty, and submit himself to trial for the two remaining accusations. To them as well it was explained that the ex-President could submit himself to justice for any accusation made before the day of the coup or before any international judicial body that would offer the conditions of objectivity, but he would not humiliate himself before the court that had administered him the coup d'etat. Later, and at the end of our visit and in view of the fact that agreement had not advanced, we presented before the High Commission a Position Paper, prepared personally by ex-President Manuel Zelaya, today coordinator of the National Resistance Front, demanding that the OAS act in congruence with its Democratic Charter (whose substance is the right of the people), with its own reiterated declarations, and with its commitment not to recognize the government as long as the situation created by the coup is not reversed and full rights have not been restored.

Since then Secretary General Insulza has traveled throughout Latin America lobbying its governments to accept Honduras by majority vote, dismissing those that oppose it, and has lobbied recently in the meeting of SICA in El Salvador in which, despite the fact that the norms of the organization demand a total consensus, in the absence of a country and of three of the presidents, President Funes announced the reincorporation of Porfirio Lobo in the System and solicited, as had been announced many times that he would for pragmatism, the reincorporation of its representative in the OAS.

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