The dictator wants to get Honduras out of the ALBA, but not PETROCARIBE

Thursday December 17, 2009 10:08

Page 12, December 17, 2009

The Honduran dictatorship renounces to ALBA. Fortified with the elections and the overwhelming support of the United States, the de facto president Roberto Micheletti said yesterday that he asked  Congress to withdraw from the Latin American bloc founded by Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales, among other leaders. The initiative does not have a date to be treated, but Zelayistas in Tegucigalpa  ruled out that it will be adopted by an overwhelming majority in Congress.After everything it is the same Legislature that passed the coup last June and rejected the return of ousted President Manuel Zelaya two weeks ago.

Minister of the Presidency of the dictatorship, Rafael Pineda Ponce, said they did not want to end the business relationship with strategic countries like Venezuela, only the political alliance that Zelaya had sealed in the middle of his term, a year and a half before being overthrown by the military and most political leaders Honduras. "I do not in any way to affect any commercial or other operations that have been maintained, oil imports and what it has to do with PetroCaribe," the de facto officer said.

A few months before becoming a full member of Alba, the Zelaya government had acceded to PetroCaribe in January 2008. The deal was too tempting for a country's net importers of oil. Venezuela agreed to provide 20 thousand barrels per day of oil to 60 percent charge in 90 days and the remaining 40 percent within 25 years, with two-year grace period and only one percent annual interest. He later joined the importation of fuel to the agreement. The Secretary of the Presidency of the dictatorship promised yesterday to respect the debt incurred to date and, in turn, keep the agreement. But it remained unclear whether the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez wants to maintain a beneficial treatment as a government, now considered an enemy of the group of progressive governments in the region.

What is certain is that once the small Central American country lies outside the Latin American bloc, they will lose millions of dollars in social aid and investment, financed by its partners, mainly the Bolivarian government of Chavez. "It is insolent because they are denying the poor a cooperation that the country was getting with Hugo Chávez," Zelaya said from his bunker at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa. Pending a possible general amnesty allowed to depart,  the Honduran President accused  the  dictatorship of having squandered 100 million dollars from funds of Alba.

But what really seemed to irritate the ousted leader was that Micheletti wants out of an alliance that he himself approved as president of the Honduran Congress. In August last year the Legislature overwhelmingly supported the request for joining the Alba Zelaya, they did so reluctantly.