Honduras: Is US moving to back ‘state of siege’ election?

Instead, according to media reports, Washington is considering a “Plan B” in which it would back elections set for November 29 as a solution to the country’s three-and-a-half-months-old crisis, regardless of whether Zelaya is reinstated or not.

The Honduran president was removed from office in a June 28 coup that saw him abducted from the presidential palace by armed troops and placed on an airplane flying him into involuntary exile.

Zelaya, who has been confined to the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa since his clandestine return to the country last month, has once again extended a deadline for negotiating an agreement with the coup regime, with another round of the so-called Guaymuras Dialogue set to take place today.

While after two weeks of talks both sides had claimed to agree on “95 percent” of a settlement, the sticking point remains the return of Zelaya to the presidency.

The Micheletti-led regime is demanding that any return to office by Zelaya be predicated on a decision by the Honduran Supreme Court of Justice, which issued the original ruling legitimizing the coup. The court found that Zelaya’s attempt to stage a referendum on whether there existed popular support for constituent assembly to amend the country’s constitution amounted to a criminal violation of the constitution itself.

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