Global News Journal

from Tales from the Trail:

Is Chavez helping Iran build the bomb?

Veteran Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau is on Hugo Chavez's case.

Morgenthau warned last week at Washington's Brookings Institution that Iran is using Venezuela's financial system to avoid international sanctions so it can acquire materials to develop nuclear weapons and missiles.  He urged more scrutiny of the "emerging axis of Iran and Venezuela" in an op/ed article in the Wall Street Journal, in which he said a number of mysterious Iranian factories had sprung up in remote parts of Venezuela.

Chavez's man in Washington, Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez, called the allegations "outrageous ... unfounded and irresponsible" in a letter to the district attorney seen by Reuters.

True, leftist President Chavez has done little to endear himself to Americans. A fierce critic of the United States, his foreign policy rule of thumb is my enemy's enemies are my friends. His last trip abroad included visits to Libya, Algeria, Syria, Iran, Belarus and Russia. He loudly announced plans to buy Russian tanks and anti-aircraft missiles.

But Chavez maintains the weapons are needed to defend Venezuela, which he says is threatened by a growing U.S. military presence in neighboring Colombia. And he swears he has no intention of developing an atomic bomb.

Besides vast oil reserves, Venezuela has large deposits of uranium, though there are no signs of any plans to mine them.

from Tales from the Trail:

Honduran coup tests Obama in Latin America

Deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya got his strongest endorsement yet from President Barack Obama on Tuesday as the exiled leftist leader returned to Washington to meet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.    The United States has joined Latin America in unanimously condemning the military coup in the banana-producing country that ran Zelaya out of town in his pajamas ten days ago.   But Washington has been reluctant to slap sanctions on Honduras and cut off U.S. aid. Instead it is cautiously looking for a negotiated and peaceful resolution to a crisis that looks like a win-win situation for the United States' main adversary in the hemisphere, Venezuela's leftist leader Hugo Chavez.   Zelaya, a wealthy rancher who turned left in office and signed on to Chavez's growing anti-U.S. coalition, is hardly the best poster boy for democracy. His moves to follow Chavez's example and extend presidential term limits in Honduras sparked the political crisis in which the Honduran Supreme Court, with the backing of Congress, ordered the army to oust the president.   After years of U.S. neglect of Latin America during the Bush administration, Obama is trying to improve relations with the region and cannot afford to be on the wrong side of a crisis that many Latin Americans see as a flashback to a dark era of military dictatorships supported by the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Pentagon suspended military cooperation with Honduras last week, even though it maintains a U.S. base in the Central American country that served as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" in the 1980s when the United States was supplying the Contra war against Nicaragua's Sandinistas.   Experts on Latin America warn that the close relationship with the Honduran military could lead the United States to do what it had done for decades during the Cold War: side with the elites.   "The battle between Zelaya and his opponents pits a reformist president supported by labor unions and social organizations against a mafia-like, drug-ridden, corrupt political elite who is accustomed to choosing not only the Supreme Court and the Congress, but also the president," said Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.   Dan Erikson, of the Inter-American Dialogue, believes Chavez is well-positioned to benefit from any outcome.   "If Zelaya is restored, then another Chavez ally remains in power. If the coup is not reversed, then Chavez has a new issue with which to rally anti-American sentiments in the region. The bottom line is that Chavez is engaged in trying to exploit the Honduran coup to maximum advantage," Erikson said.      The hemisphere has still not figured out how to contain a new breed of power-grabbing populist leaders like Chavez who have risen through the ballot box, Erikson said.   But whatever their authoritarian tendencies might be, there is broad consensus today --unlike in decades past-- that military coups against democratically elected governments are totally unacceptable.

Reuters photos by Luis Galdamez (Zelaya at San Salvador airport on July 5); Daniel LeClair (soldiers stop a woman), and Henry Romero ( Zelaya supporter protesting after soldiers fire tear gas at Tegucigalpa airport, where troops blocked the runway on July 5 to prevent the ousted president from landing).

When is a coup not a coup?

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was seized by the military, bundled onto a plane in his pajamas and flown out of the country. The people who took over the country last Sunday say it was not a coup.

The interim government, led by Congress speaker Roberto Micheletti, argue that Zelaya’s ouster was legal as it was ordered by the Supreme Court after the president had tried to extend his four-year term in office illegally.    They say he was acting unconstitutionally and had to be removed.    The rest of the world seems to disagree. From U.S. President Barack Obama to arch-U.S. rival Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, world leaders have condemned Zelaya’s removal and used the term “coup.”   In the days before the coup, opposition leaders said they planned to impeach Zelaya over his plan to hold an unofficial public survey to gauge support for letting presidents run for re-election beyond the current one four-year term. They said a congressional committee set up to investigate Zelaya found he had violated the Central American nation’s laws and would ask Congress to declare him unfit to rule.    Does one unconstitutional act justify another? In a democracy, is it ever justified for soldiers to seize a president and spirit him out of the country? Does the fact that Congress quickly elected a successor, who will serve only until presidential elections in November, make any difference?

  Defining the nature of the “coup” has been troubling lawyers at the U.S. State Department.   By law, no U.S. aid — other than for the promotion of democracy — may be given to a nation “whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree.”    Two U.S. officials said the legal determination of this was complex despite the fact that Zelaya was grabbed by the military and put on a plane to Costa Rica in his pajamas.    “The military moved against the president. They removed him from his home and they expelled him from the country. So the military participated in a coup,” said a senior U.S. official.        “However, the transfer of leadership was not a military action. The transfer of leadership was done by the Honduran Congress and therefore the coup, while it had a military component … is a larger event,” he added.    Zelaya was unpopular with many in Honduras, particularly the country’s wealthier conservative elite, for his alliance with Chavez. His popularity was down to 30 percent.    Many Hondurans struggle to understand why foreign leaders, from Obama to most of Latin America’s presidents, have backed Zelaya.    “They have only listened to (Zelaya) abroad, they haven’t listened to the population. But that doesn’t matter. We will continue alone,” said Adela Guevara, a hotel worker.     Tell us what you think. When is a coup not a coup?

(Pictures in Honduras by REUTERS/Edgard Garrido. Pictures show: Soldiers crawling through a hole in the fence to enter the presidential residency; members of Congress praying before Roberto Micheletti is sworn in as interim president; Zelaya (L) being welcomed by Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez (R) and Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega (C) after his arrival in Nicaragua June 29, 2009. )

Is this Georgia’s answer to Hugo Chavez?

Reuters News correspondent Matt Robinson filed this post from Tbilisi:

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is back. In a marathon Q&A session on Georgian television on Friday he said he himself was in great shape, but that the parliament speaker’s heart had recently stopped beating after suffering an allergic reaction to medication.

“As a result his heart stopped, he was in collapse,” Saakashvili said, tanned and relaxed. “But then they managed to save him.” He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and read out text messages from his poorly colleague.

As for the prime minister, he’s working too hard. “I was calling him at 3 a.m. and he was in the office. I come to work at 11, sometimes 11.15. He’s in the office from 8 a.m. I told him he won’t last like that.”

Saakashvili’s relaxed banter dominated the 4-hour show, leaving the impression of a man firmly in control of his government, if not perhaps his train of thought.

The format was familiar. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has made a tradition of his annual televised phone-in with Russians, but their styles could hardly be more different. Think more Venezuela’s fast-talking Hugo Chavez.

“I’m not planning to die, nor to step down,” 41-year-old Saakashvili said.