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GOVERNMENTS AND INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS DITHER, BUT END TO HONDURAS COUP MAY BE IN SIGHT.

Article Excerpt
The Honduran coup is well past its third month without resolution. It is soon to become moot, as President Manuel Zelaya's term closes in on its January 2010 end point, and the Sturm und Drang of November elections overwhelm the issue with upheaval regarding the legitimacy of the government they will produce. But before that happens, the issue continues opening rifts and presenting new contentious disputes in the wider world.

These divisions include growing disagreement between the US and Brazil, for which latter country the coup offers an opportunity to challenge the globe's most powerful state and further enhance its own influence in international affairs. Even Jewish cultural and political groups have seized the issue to argue Judaism as an ethical heritage versus Zionism.

A Zionist organization, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), is lobbying the administration of US President Barack Obama to reverse its support of Zelaya's return on the grounds that Zelaya is too close to Venezuela, which is too close to Iran, which is too close, allegedly, to developing nuclear capabilities with which to challenge an already nuclear Israel. Pitted against them is the Latino and Latin American Institute of the American Jewish Committee, which contends that the administration's backing for the rule of law to restore US relationships in the hemisphere is the operative consideration.

Brazil, meanwhile, has withstood threats against the integrity of its embassy by the Honduran de facto government of Roberto Micheletti in reprisal for allowing Zelaya to take refuge there after his clandestine return to his country (see NotiCen, 2009-09-24). For this act of largesse, the Brazilian government came under...

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