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Obama defends US tactics on Honduran coup

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-08-11 13:51

US President Barack Obama answers a journalist's question during a news conference at the North American Leaders' Summit in Guadalajara August 10, 2009. [Agencies]

GUADALAJARA, Mexico: President Barack Obama said on Monday it was hypocritical for critics of Washington's response to a coup against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya to demand a more forceful US role in returning him to power.

Zelaya, an ally of anti-US leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, said last week the United States needs "only tighten its fist" to evict the de facto government installed after he was overthrown in June.

"The same critics who say that the United States has not intervened enough in Honduras are the same people who say we are always intervening and the Yanquis need to get out of Latin America," Obama said told a closing news conference at a US-Mexico-Canada summit in Guadalajara.

"You can't have it both ways," he insisted, without naming names. "We have been very clear in our belief that President Zelaya was removed from office illegally, that it was a coup and that he should return. We have cooperated with all the international bodies in sending that message."

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The Latin American left had bitterly criticized Washington over the decades for intervening in the region's affairs through military force, covert action and economic pressure.

Echoing Latin America's traditional distrust of the United States, Cuban President Raul Castro said on Monday there was no way the Honduran military could have toppled Zelaya without a green light from the US government.

"On this continent, those gorillas, those coup leaders, don't breathe without Washington's permission," he said in Quito, flanked by Zelaya, Chavez and Ecuador's leftist President Rafael Correa at the start of his second term.

Castro said he still wanted to believed that Obama was "a man full of good intentions" towards Latin America.

Obama, who took office in January, has promised to forge a relationship with Latin America based on mutual respect.

Obama told reporters in Washington last week he had no quick way to resolve the political crisis in Honduras and that the United States would not take unilateral action.

"If these critics think that it's appropriate for us to suddenly act in ways that in every other context they consider inappropriate, then I think that what that indicates is that maybe there's some hypocrisy involved in their approach to US-Latin American relations," Obama said Monday.

Mediation efforts by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias have so far failed to achieve Zelaya's return.