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HONDURAS PRESIDENT MANUEL ZELAYA, TIRED OF WAITING, CALLS FOR INSURRECTION.

Article Excerpt
Two weeks into Honduras' post-coup interregnum, exiled President Manuel Zelaya has come to see the Washington-brokered mediation of Costa Rica's President Oscar Arias as a scheme to run out the clock on his tenure.

Hondurans are scheduled to go to the polls to elect a new government on Nov. 29 and to inaugurate a new president in January 2010. Faced with a string of time-outs and delays for all manner of procedural purposes in what he views as reinstatement talks, Zelaya has sought to retake control of a situation that finds his country run by a group headed by the former president of the Congress, Roberto Micheletti.

No country recognizes this group as a legitimate government, and no country has withdrawn recognition of the Zelaya administration. On July 13, Zelaya told a news conference, "We are giving the coup regime an ultimatum. The mediation effort will be considered failed and other measures will be taken," if, at the next round of talks, he is not returned to country and to office.

The Micheletti regime contends that a fair reading of the Honduras Constitution proves that the concerted actions of the military, the legislature, and the Corte Suprema de Justicia (CSJ) in overthrowing the Zelaya government were legal, that theirs is the extant government, and that a misguided international community will come around in time.

They are more than comfortable with a bargaining schedule that calls for the next meeting of principals to be delayed until July 18.

Time appears to have worked for the regime on the home front, too. A curfew and other restrictions, encompassing generation of electricity and media shutdowns amounting to near-martial law, have diminished pro-Zelaya fervor to the point that the restrictions had been lifted without a return to massive street...

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