Honduran Leadership Finds Friends Among GOP Lawmakers

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 9, 2009

In the three months since soldiers expelled Honduras's leftist president, the Obama administration and the rest of the world have shunned the Central American country, cutting off aid and travel visas. But the isolated Honduran leadership has found one lifeline: Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Within days of President Manuel Zelaya's ouster on June 28, the Honduran elite launched a lobbying campaign in Washington, arguing that the leftist leader had been a menace to their country. The de facto Honduran government and its allies have spent at least $600,000 on public-relations experts and lobbyists from both parties, including Lanny Davis, who was special counsel to President Bill Clinton.

Although the Hondurans have not succeeded in reversing U.S. policy, their arguments have found favor with some American lawmakers. A Republican senator has blocked two key nominations for Latin America, weakening President Obama's diplomatic team. In the past week, two GOP delegations have traveled to Honduras to meet with the de facto government, which is not recognized internationally.

Those actions have complicated the strategy of the Obama administration, which has been seeking to impress a growing crop of leftist Latin American leaders with its pro-democracy credentials. The administration is pressing for a negotiated solution in Honduras and worries that the de facto government is trying to run out the clock until the Nov. 29 presidential election -- with the support of its allies in Washington.

"It gives [the de facto government] this hope you can hang on," said one U.S. official, who was not authorized to speak on the record. "It's not helpful."

Republicans say they are trying to prevent the spread of a leftist, anti-American ideology promoted by Venezuela's leader, Hugo Chávez -- a close ally of Zelaya's.

"We've seen these power-hungry leaders of South and Central America take command and never let go. It's a worrisome trend," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), a longtime critic of Chávez.

But other Republicans who have befriended the de facto government have little or no experience in the region, such as Sen. Jim DeMint (S.C.), an outspoken Obama foe. That has given rise to speculation that they are playing politics.

"It's about the Republicans using what they can to attack the administration," said Julia E. Sweig, a Latin America expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. "It's definitely bigger than Latin America."

Some analysts say the pushback has made the Obama administration more cautious on Honduras. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in an interview last month, however, that U.S. efforts to seek a negotiated solution have "certainly put us on the right side of the dispute."

The Honduran crisis began when Zelaya, a rancher who had positioned himself as a champion of the poor, was arrested by soldiers and whisked out of the country on a military plane.

Obama quickly joined the rest of the hemisphere's leaders in declaring that "the coup was not legal."

In the next few days, though, it became clear that this was no typical Latin American military coup. The Honduran Supreme Court revealed that the military was acting on an arrest warrant it had issued for Zelaya on charges that included treason. The accusations stemmed from his campaign for constitutional reform, which many Hondurans saw as an effort to entrench himself in power.

Although the arrest may have been legitimate, the military's expulsion of Zelaya was a "direct violation" of the constitution, according to an analysis by the U.S. Congress's legal research arm.

Clinton has backed a plan that would reinstate Zelaya with reduced powers until the end of his term in January. Roberto Micheletti, who has assumed the Honduran presidency, has rejected the plan.

Isolated internationally, Micheletti and his supporters have taken their case to the U.S. Congress. A group of Honduran businessmen backing Micheletti hired Roger F. Noriega, a top Latin America official in the Bush administration, to organize a meeting in July with Republican lawmakers.

"It's the most senators I've seen in a room on Latin America in at least a decade," said Dan Fisk, another former Bush official who until recently was a Senate aide.

"What caught a number of senators' attention . . . is that all of a sudden you had the United States, Chávez and [Cuban leader Fidel] Castro on the same side," said Fisk, who has provided unpaid advice to DeMint's office.

Fisk and Noriega have long been known as staunch opponents of Cuba's government and its supporters in Latin America.

Another group of Honduran businessmen hired Davis for a fee of at least $350,000. He wrangled an invitation to testify at a congressional hearing on Honduras in July and met with lawmakers from both parties. Davis said in an interview that he has not spoken to Clinton about Honduras and that he has backed her calls for a negotiated solution.

In addition, the de facto government signed a $292,000 contract with a politically connected public relations firm in Washington.

Zelaya, in contrast, has relied largely on his ambassador in Washington to make contacts in Congress.

"We don't have money to pay anyone. It's an unequal fight," said Ambassador Eduardo Enrique Reina.

For two months, DeMint has protested the Obama administration's Honduras policy by holding up a vote on its nominees for assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, Arturo Valenzuela, and ambassador to Brazil, Thomas A. Shannon Jr.

The senator has built a following as an Obama critic, saying in July that conservatives could "break" the president by thwarting his health-care reform efforts. But DeMint denied he was using the Honduras issue to pummel the president.

"This is not about Obama. This is about foreign policy," he said. "What I'm trying to do is get some of the facts on the table and encourage the administration to take a fair look."