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Honduras joins United States, Guatemala, Kosovo in establishing Jerusalem embassy.. Honduras will move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem by the end of June, joining the United States in the historic decision to open a diplomatic post in Israel’s capital. Senior adviser to the Israeli minister of regional cooperation David Aaronson tweeted Tuesday celebrating Honduras's decision to move its mission to Jerusalem. Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado will arrive in Israel on June 23, According to Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom. Hernández announced in 2019 that the Latin American country would move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but...

Honduras hopes to relocate its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem before the end of the year, putting an end to its policy of neutrality - a move likely to further anger the Palestinians. "I have just talked to Prime Minister Netanyahu to strengthen our strategic alliance, we spoke to arrange the opening of the embassies in Tegucigalpa and Jerusalem, respectively," Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez posted on Twitter on Sunday. "We hope to take this historic step before the end of the year, as long as the pandemic allows it." Netanyahu said the intention was to open and inaugurate...

Porfirio Lobo, Honduras president elect, said on Sunday he is committed to enable ousted president Manuel Zelaya to leave the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, where he remains under refuge following a frustrated attempt last week. Honduras now made it clear what it will accept: "It was decided at the highest level of government: it will be a territorial asylum and he may not go to any nation which borders Honduras, ie that is in Central America," said the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Milton Mateo. According to the Honduran government, Zelaya will not be allowed to travel to Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua...

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Honduras' coup-installed government says ousted leader Manuel Zelaya is free to leave the country, but there's a catch: Zelaya can't go as president, and he says he won't go as anything else. And so he remained holed up Thursday in the Brazilian Embassy, where he has been staying since he slipped back into the country three months ago. If he sets foot outside the building, the leaders who ousted him have vowed to arrest him on charges of treason and abuse of power. They appeared to be softening their stance on Wednesday when they initially responded positively...

Honduras' interim government says it has authorized ousted President Manuel Zelaya to leave the country and go to Mexico. Foreign Ministry spokesman Milton Mateo says the safe-conduct pass was signed and would be delivered to the Brazilian Embassy, where Zelaya has been holed up since sneaking back into the country Sept. 21. Mateo said Wednesday night that the Mexican government has sent an airplane to pick up Zelaya and his family. Another official of the interim government's Foreign Ministry said Mexico requested that Zelaya be given safe conduct to leave. A Mexican government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, says...

Andres Oppenheimer of the Miami Herald wrote an intriguing piece recently on the splash effect of the coup, or crisis, or whatever term least offends someone of Honduras’ new leadership and recent election, and how the major powers in Latin America have tried unsuccessfully to remedy the situation. Oppenheimer argues that the US, Brazil and the OAS have all succeeded in failure in their own unique ways. Failure for the three comes as follows. For Brazil, its “hypocrisy” of recognizing Iran’s and Cuba’s undemocratic leadership, while criticizing Honduras’ recent elections. For the US, the “flip-flopping” that comes with a constant...

Honduras' deposed President Manuel Zelaya said on Sunday that he would stay in the Brazilian embassy in the Honduran capital for as long as Brasilia allowed him to and that he would be willing to talk to the new president-elect. Leftist Zelaya, who was ousted by the army in a coup on June 28, slipped back into Honduras in September and took refuge in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, from where he has been demanding his reinstatement. The United States and Brazil have been pushing for Zelaya's return to power but his fate remains uncertain after the Honduran Congress voted...

TEGUCIGALPA – The National Resistance Front that arose after the June 28 ouster of President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras has abandoned hope for the restoration of ousted the former president and is focused now on convening an assembly to overhaul the country’s constitution, one of the group’s leaders said Thursday. “We have closed this chapter on the restoration of President Zelaya, which didn’t take place,” Juan Barahona told Efe the day after Honduran lawmakers rejected reinstatement of the deposed head of state. The Honduran Congress decisively rejected the restitution of deposed President Mel Zelaya in a vote of 62 to...

final score: 111 against Z 15 for Z.

TEGUCIGALPA — A majority in the Honduran Congress have voted against reinstating deposed President Manuel Zelaya and allowing him to finish out his term of office. A simple majority of 65 lawmakers in the 128-member body voted against Zelaya's return to the presidency shortly before 730 pm (0130 GMT) on Wednesday after more than six hours of debate.

Update: 4:40: Vote is still taking place. Has stalled with a long pro-Zelaya speech by ???. She claims there was 60+ abstentionism on Sunday and is basically repeating the same things we've heard Zelaya say a thousand times. She is quoting several sections of the constitution. Says that Zelaya never submitted a change of the constitution, the court was wrong, .

The State Department recognized Porfirio Lobo's victory in Sunday's election but said the Honduran Congress still needed to vote on the restoration of deposed President Manuel Zelaya and form a government of national unity. "While the election is a significant step in Honduras' return to the democratic and constitutional order ... it's only a step and it's not the last step," said Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela. Before the election, the United States tried and failed to have Zelaya reinstated. Its support of the election upset many Latin American nations, including powerful Brazil, which called...

Honduran opposition candidate Porfirio Lobo is leading in a presidential election that could ease a five-month crisis following the June coup against President Manuel Zelaya, media exit polls said on Sunday. Lobo, a conservative, won more than 55 percent of Sunday's vote and was well ahead of ruling Liberal Party candidate Elvin Santos, the HRN radio station said. A TV channel gave Lobo 51 percent. Lobo was seen as more likely than Santos to persuade foreign governments to recognize Sunday's election.

Honduran lawmakers are due to decide on Dec. 2 whether to reinstate ousted President Manuel Zelaya and let him finish his term until a newly elected leader takes office in January. Zelaya was exiled by soldiers in a June 28 coup but has been holed up in the Brazilian Embassy since sneaking back into Honduras in September. After he pulled out of a deal to decide his return, Zelaya's future looks even more uncertain. Here are some possible scenarios for Zelaya's prospects: CONGRESS VOTES TO REINSTATE ZELAYA Zelaya's opponents control the Honduran Congress, which voted to strip him of his...

Zelayistas and journalists are deserting the sinking ship of the Brazilian Embassy. Yesterday, Salvadoran Padre Andrés Tamayo left. Deserters are escorted away by police and, I believe, are examined by doctors prior to release, which seems a wise move so that false accusations of ill effects from death rays, toxic gases, mind control radiation and whatever else they dream up cannot be claimed later. In one photo of a Zelaya follower telling a doctor about his symptoms, a Brazilian blogger notes with humor the skepticism in the face of a journalist (in the blue shirt) standing by watching. The fact...

Honduran lawmakers will not decide whether to restore ousted President Manuel Zelaya until after upcoming presidential elections, the congressional leader said Tuesday, a decision that could undermine international support for the vote. Congress will meet Dec. 2 — three days after the Nov. 29 election — to decide whether Zelaya should be returned the presidency to finish his constitutional term, which ends in January, congressional president Jose Alfredo Saavedra told local HRN radio station. Several Latin American countries have warned they will not recognize the outcome of the election unless Zelaya is restored beforehand. But the United States has not...

Sen. Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican known for his efforts to block influence domestic immigration and health-care issues, has scored a foreign-policy coup by helping to compel the Obama administration to shift its stance on strife-ridden Honduras. After demanding for months that deposed Honduran President Mel Zelaya be restored to power, senior State Department officials now say they'll accept the outcome of Nov. 29 elections in the Central American country even if Zelaya doesn't reclaim his post. "We support the elections process there," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Thursday. "We have provided technical assistance. ... These elections will...

Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya insisted late Saturday that he will not accept any deal to restore him to office if it means he must recognize elections later this month. In a letter addressed to President Barack Obama, Zelaya also repeated his accusation that Washington reversed its stance on whether the Nov. 29 vote should be considered legitimate if he was not in office. "As the elected president of the Honduran people, I reaffirm my position that starting today, no matter what, I will not accept any agreement on returning to the presidency of the republic to cover up this...

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Assailants fired an anti-tank grenade toward the building housing ballots for the upcoming Honduran presidential elections, which are taking place under the shadow of a four-month crisis caused by a coup, police said Friday. The grenade overshot the target, exploding 550 yards (500 meters) from the building in the capital of Tegucigalpa, police spokesman Orlin Cerrato said. Residents in several neighborhoods heard the explosion Thursday night, but there were no damages. Police believe the building housing election material was the intended target because the surrounding buildings are mostly residential. They said the Russian-made, rocket-propelled grenade was likely...