Report: UN concluded Zelaya removal legal; Update: UN says was just a consultant opinion

posted at 8:47 am on October 14, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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The Obama administration has insisted that the removal of Manuel Zelaya from office violated Honduran and international law and amounts to a military coup.  According to one report this morning, though, the United Nations has reached an entirely different conclusion.  Hondudario, translated by Google, reports that the UN’s Department of Political Affairs concluded that the removal of Zelaya from office was legal and justified (via La Gringa’s Blogicito):

A study by the Department of Political Affairs of the United Nations Organization (UNO) on the causes of the crisis in Honduras, concluded that the removal of President Manuel Zelaya, “was constitutional under the laws of the country,” confirmed officials of that agency.

This version was officially known today by senior UN officials, which also coincides with the study prepared by the Library of Congress, which looked at by his side, the situation that generated and maintained in a political crisis in Honduras.

The document of the study by the Department of Political Affairs of the UN, with other information base (another truth) received at the last visit to Honduras, where it converged with representatives of the Organization of American States (OAS) and took advantage to meet other scenarios that were unclear.

The information on this collegial resolution of these experts, was provided to hondudiario.com, official sources and pressures inferred strategies that promote the former foreign minister Patricia Rhodes and the permanent representative of Venezuela in the Permanent Council to seek more sanctions against Honduras and require the return of former President Zelaya, which warned of “an ultimatum” to this October 15.

Bear in mind that Hondudario ran this in an editorial, at least as far as I can tell.  Nothing else has hit the wires about a UN determination in this crisis.   The UN’s DPA has a website, but does not have anything at all on the Honduran stand-off.

If this turns out to be true, though, it would come as a shock and embarrassment to the White House.  The Law Library of Congress has already reached the same conclusion, a development which the Obama administration has ignored, and which most of the media have studiously avoided mentioning.  A UN report backing Roberto Micheletti, the Honduran parliament, and Supreme Court would expose Obama’s knee-jerk conclusion and siding with democracy advocates such as the Castro brothers and Hugo Chavez for the amateurish bungling that it was.

Update: TrueSlant says the UN has issued a statement explaining that they have not yet taken a position, and that this was an opinion from a DPA consulting firm:

A recent Honduran media report appears to refer to an analysis submitted by a consultant as representing the views of the Department of Political Affairs    This is highly misleading. The Department of Political Affairs routinely receives reports and analyses of this type from consultants, academics and other experts. But its views are strictly in line with that outlined in the General Assembly Resolution.

Perhaps the UN would release the consultant report to see how it matches with the Congressional finding.

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